


A Long Way From Home

by TheMagnificentKiwi



Series: A Long Way From Home [1]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Isolation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:20:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24023491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMagnificentKiwi/pseuds/TheMagnificentKiwi
Summary: Truth be told, he didn't know how to process any of what had happened over the last few days, and maybe she didn't either but he needed her here so they could figure that out together.~~In the aftermath of Raccoon City's destruction, Jill and Carlos lay low in seclusion, neither quite knowing how to deal with what's behind them or how to approach what is ahead. Together, they navigate the pitfalls of recovery amidst a new friendship and some complicated feelings.
Relationships: Carlos Oliveira/Jill Valentine
Series: A Long Way From Home [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1836568
Comments: 99
Kudos: 285





	1. Safe?

**Author's Note:**

> So I've not written anything in many many years but after playing the remake I had to get something out for these two. I anticipate this being maybe 3 or 4 chapters but it was only meant to be a oneshot at first XD. Let me know if you liked it, and stay tuned!

**A Long Way From Home**

_1\. Safe?_

**October 1st, 1998. 11:00.**

The late morning sun hung high but beneath the canopy shadows lurked. The only sound that permeated the still was familiar footfall and occasional birdsong. That was all that kept her focused. The night her thoughts dwelled in, the night this whole nightmare began, there had been no birdsong.

Every now and then a branch would snap beneath Carlos's heavy footsteps and a shiver would travel the wrong way up her spine.

'Get a grip,' she willed herself. But even with the light, the birds and company, she was set on edge. The sooner they were out of this damn place the better. She hated feeling this way, hated more so that she recognised just how silly it was and it felt no less real.

They had been walking perhaps half an hour when Carlos's pace finally slowed. There was no limp to his step but the way he carried himself was no better. The bag on his shoulder seemed to get heavier and heavier the more ground that they covered and his forehead was now drenched with sweat.

"Hey," she said. "Let's take five minutes."

"And do what? Let's keep moving."

Jill frowned.

"You know, that's exactly what Tyrell said to me, minutes before he was killed," she told him. "Whatever Umbrella drilled into you both, you're still human."

He knew she was right. He got that maddening look on his face, the one that said he held too much pride for a man who looked like he was one fight past being done. But he still sighed when he allowed himself to stop and turned to look at her imploringly.

"We aren't safe yet." He spoke so softly he probably would have convinced her had she not worried about him just a little too much.

"How far out are we?"

Carlos looked around, looked up, looked at his compass.

"Half an hour at least, I'd guess."

"Then what's another five minutes? Carlos, if we were being followed we would have noticed by now. You need to rest. _We_ need to rest."

She didn't particularly want to stay amongst the trees and the shadows and the memories any longer than was necessary, but this struck her as very necessary. The agony her own body had been suspended in for most of the last mile was better hidden than his but no less quiet. They both needed this.

There was further reluctance in his expression as he looked her up and down, then he swore quietly, laughed, and allowed the bag to drop to the forest floor. He wouldn't tell her she was right but she took the silent victory.

They were heading to a farmstead he claimed belonged to an old friend. The farm was non-operational and his friend kept it clean and running only as a vacation home but Carlos had been staying there prior to the Raccoon City deployment. It had soft beds, fresh linen, a functional shower, food, and to top it all off it was miles away from the nearest habited point. It sounded almost too good to be true, and she was reserving a final opinion for their arrival.

At the very least he was serious about the covert nature of their escape. They were incredibly lucky to have not been flagged by the military and herded to a quarantine camp. Instead, Carlos had set them down in a forest clearing, they had salvaged what they could from their ride and then set off on foot through the forest to reach their destination.

The thought of a soft bed to crawl into almost made all of this worth it. Almost. Because it was warm and dry and her lips were cracked and there was a good chance she was dehydrated.

As Carlos settled against a tree she surveyed their surroundings. She couldn't be sure if they were still in the Arklay region, but the flora was more or less what she had grown accustomed to. Tall, thin trees with a canopy that alternated between heavy and sparse at this time of year. They kept to the dense patches, lest prying eyes be scouting from above.

Birdsong echoed around them and she closed her eyes to fully drink it in. In the distance, the light sounds of local fauna darting from tree to tree. Even then, Joseph's agonized screams ebbed on the edge of her perception, tormenting her.

"Hey."

She opened her eyes. Carlos was on his feet again, hands warm against the bare skin of her arms. When she looked up at him she was called back to that fevered dream and a faint moan escaped her lips.

"Are you alright?"

The concern in his voice was genuine. It was welcomed. How many people had given this much of a shit recently?

She laughed, bit her bottom lip and shook her head as though the memories would come tumbling right out.

"Shit…” he breathed, as though some startling realisation had befallen him. “It’s the mansion incident, isn’t it?

Jill looked up at him, into those warm, dark eyes and any surprise she felt at his words melted away. No malice, no dark intent. She really needed to stop thinking the worst of people.

"You know about that?"

"We tracked Bard to the police station," he explained. "I saw your report."

She pushed his hands away and ran her own fingers across her skin. Goosebumps. In this weather. Her touch glanced along the bottom of a clean bandage. When Carlos had seen just how soiled the old one was he had insisted on re-dressing it before they moved out.

Lucky. Again. Unlike Joseph. Unlike Richard. Unlike Brad.

"Why did you trust me?" Carlos asked. "I get the helping civilians part, but after that…knowing what Umbrella did, knowing I worked for them. Why?"

She had thought about this a lot and was still no closer to explaining it. When she was in trouble, it was instinct to call him. And he had not let her down, not once. Even now. Her instincts had always served her well.

"I didn't," she admitted. "Not at first. But I know Umbrella, and that's not who you are."

* * *

**October 1st, 1998. 14:00.**

Carlos tried his best to be gentle, but he always had been somewhat clumsy with his hands. Just look at the state of her arm – a butcher could have sewn her up better. But he knew that her even allowing him to look at her wounds when she was conscious showed an incredible amount of trust. The last thing he wanted to do was suggest that was misplaced.

With the absence of the grime that had coated them both pre-shower, it was easier to see the damage and there wasn't a lot he could do. He thought back to the vials and dressings he had managed to round up in the hospital, catalogued each and every wound that he had cleaned and dressed. There were more now, but only one required stitches. Whatever lay bruised and broken beneath the skin they would just have to hope healed on its own.

He, on the other hand… Five days had passed since his platoon had arrived in Raccoon City and in that time not one of his injuries had been seen to. Truth be told, the majority had been inflicted in the last 24 hours, but some bruises had settled into a sickly shade of yellow and some cuts had started to knit themselves closed already. Jill's touch was far more professional than his – he barely felt her deft fingerwork as she wound needle and thread through the flesh of his arm. Had he not known any better, he could have pinned her for a pickpocket with a touch like that.

Damp hair fell over her face, a look of pure concentration set deep in her eyes. It didn't even hurt any more. Not with this view. Not with the way she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.

He had to force himself to look away, steeled his jaw and focused on the sharp pain of needle piercing already tender flesh. He had thought her pretty the moment they had met, he'd have been a fucking idiot not to. Watching her fight for her life and win every time, seeing her reckless tenacity in action...he was in trouble very quickly. Now, with death at their backs and the world slowly returning to whatever echo of normal it would be from now on, if there was unlaboured breath left in him she would have taken it away.

"Just remember to keep this clean," she told him as she gave the wound one last stinging wipe and sat back to inspect her work. "Last thing we want right now is sepsis."

Carlos raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah alright, me too," she said with a smile. "Anything else?"

His ribs ached like nothing else, but they weren't broken and even if they were there wasn't much either of them could do about that. Nicholai had hit hard but he'd survived worse.

A glance at the clock told him that it was barely mid-afternoon. They had showered, and had eaten bits and pieces between the patching up but neither had the stomach for anything more substantial. He had managed to find some clothing roughly her size in the spare bedroom, and their old gear was still soaking outside. There was nothing left that begged for their attention and after five days on the move he found it difficult to settle back into a lower gear.

"How long can we stay here?" Jill asked, packing away the medical supplies.

Carlos shrugged.

"As long as we need."

"Do Umbrella know this address?"

"No. Didn't seem too interested in what I was doing outside of work."

Her posture did not relax. It wasn't going to be that easy to convince her.

"How about you? You got some place to go?"

She said nothing. Gathered up the stained gauze in a gloved hand, flipped said glove inside out and disposed of it all together.

"You can stay here as long as you need," he offered when she didn't answer. "No pressure. No rent. No obligation."

She wasn't going anywhere until those wounds had healed and she knew it too.

"I can't stay here forever," she said. "I have work to do, people relying on me."

There was something so final in her words. Like her mind was already made up. Like this was as far as their story went. Somehow, that stung more than the alcohol-soaked gauze she had pressed to his arm only moments before. They had been through so much together, it felt wrong to part ways so suddenly and pretend that nothing had happened. Truth be told, he didn't know how to process any of what had happened over the last few days, and maybe she didn't either but he needed her here so they could figure that out together.

"Well, the offer stands," he said.

"What are you going to do?" By now, she had tidied away their mess and sank onto the sofa beside him. The light from the window in the background softened her features, loaned her an air of vulnerability that felt shockingly out of place on her.

"Honestly? Hadn't figured that part out yet."

Umbrella had paid enough for Raccoon that he didn't need to worry about money for a while, and they had paid up front. Habit had driven him to withdraw half of this prior to deployment and stash it in his room but he made a mental note to withdraw the rest on his way out of town, just in case.

"No going back?" Jill asked.

"Not a chance."

How could he, knowing what he knew now?

And that was the crux of it. The salt in the wound this whole sorry ordeal had opened. He had been here before, in worse shape and less favourable company. Sitting in a rundown bar on the outskirts of Bogota, spending his last few pesos on cheap aguardiente, looking at the equally unappealing options of returning home to his mother with his tail tucked between his legs or sleeping on the streets when his rent ran out at the end of the week. That was where Umbrella had found him, wasn't it? They knew what had happened to his comrades, what had almost happened to him. Perhaps they knew just how sick he had been two days before, redressing his bullet wounds, icing down a fever and thinking maybe this was what killed him. The fact that he was one of an infinitely small number to make it out of that bloodbath alive apparently said that he was someone they needed.

Umbrella was supposed to be his big break. His chance to get back on the straight and narrow after three years of decisions that just kept getting worse and worse and worse. Three years of such a mismanagement of his own life that he was on the verge of prison or being swept sideways into a street gang like the others. Now, he finally had a chance to do good, to save people, to make the world a better place, like he had wanted to all along.

"Umbrella fooled both of us," Jill said. "Take good people, put them in a bad situation, watch what they do. That's their MO."

"You think I'm a good person?"

She looked him in the eyes.

"I know you are." She looked away, pulled her knees up onto the sofa, picked at her jeans and then looked back at him with tired blue eyes. "Look, I never got the chance to thank you for saving my life. And then you did it again, and again." She laughed. "I never asked you to, never expected it. Didn't even know I needed it. I guess this is me saying thank you."

Carlos smiled and raised an arm to place a hand gently on her shoulder. She did not flinch, did not move, did not shrug him away.

He thought he had failed. The city was gone, the civilians dead, his platoon, his friends… He had saved no-one.

No-one but her. And maybe that was enough for now.

* * *

**October 2nd, 1998. 02:47.**

Jill woke with a strangled scream. Covered in sweat and gasping for air, she rubbed images of rotten flesh from her eyes, willed away the nausea that threatened to eject her late dinner.

The dreams never changed, only the faces. And when she woke to unfamiliar surroundings, to moonlight streaming in from between heavy curtains, fear turned into a full-blown panic attack and she had to force herself to breathe through it, to remember where she was.

'Get a hold of yourself. This is the last thing you need right now.'

What she needed was her medication. Enough sleeping pills to knock her out for a few days.

Perhaps it was a good thing that she had her own room, so that Carlos didn't witness her like this. And that only brought more anxiety. They were stuck here for now. She wouldn't always be so lucky. He would see this eventually. Then, what would he think? He'd think her crazy. Unstable. A liability. The admiration he had looked at her with, the confidence in her ability to take care of herself…that would be gone. The last of S.T.A.R.S., a fucking mess. What a legacy to leave behind.

Swearing, she pushed herself to her feet. The aches were more pronounced now and this headache just would not budge. So, she popped a few more painkillers with the last of the water from the glass at her bedside and push the ball of her hands into her eyes.

Perhaps they could take a trip into the nearby town tomorrow. Pick up some over the counter solution. The dreams were unrelenting, even with medication, but she needed sleep however that came. If Umbrella found her in this state, she was as good as dead.

'What about Carlos?'

He would never admit to it, but he was as bad as her, possibly worse.

Her room was across the hallway to his but she was a light sleeper these days and left her door cracked open. She did wake through the night, several times. The first time, she had woken to the creak of floorboards – a deliberate pace around his room. The second, she had paced the hallway herself, poking her head around his door when she heard no snoring. He was awake, of course, but pretending very hard not to be, with his back turned to her. The third was a little more turbulent but his room was empty when she walked past, the sound of running water and a light from beneath the bathroom door calming her after a moment of panic. She had retreated to her room before he emerged so their paths did not cross and they had both laid awake for some time after she was done, neither acknowledging the other's insomnia.

Jill wondered if he had slept at all. She doubted it. She had been where he was and it wasn't pleasant.

This time, she was wide awake. So she tiptoed quietly past his room, the air devoid of the sound of snores or any other indication that he slept, and made her way to the staircase, empty glass in hand.

The old farmhouse had a language of its own. It groaned and creaked around them and did not rest in the dark hours as they did (or at least tried to). The place had character for sure, but it wasn't one she found particularly pleasant, not after that night…

As quietly as she could, she refilled her glass from the kitchen sink and allowed the coolness of the tiles to sink into the soles of her blistered feet. She missed the sounds of the city outside. They had wound her up sometimes, but they had been comforting in their own way. RC had been a fresh start for her and despite all that had become of it, the last few years had been the best of her life. Late-night cinema trips with Forest and Chris, post-work drinks in Bar Jack, summers by the riverside. She would give anything to have them back.

Her life had been irreparably changed that night. Nothing would ever be the same. Not even her friendship with the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members. They were family now, bound by something beyond obligation, beyond friendship. She laughed at this thought. She should have known she wasn't set out for a normal life, should have guessed it would be too much to hope for. S.T.A.R.S was meant to be the quiet option, the safe one.

Taking gentle sips from her glass, she wandered into the living room, the blue glow of moonlight dancing across every surface. There was no light pollution here. She could even see the stars. That was a nice change.

There was a moment where she felt calm, where the weight of the war ahead dissipated and it was just her and the stillness of the night.

Could she hold on to this? Could Umbrella wait, just a little while? She already knew the answer, but some part of her desperately searched for an end to this, to some normality. Just a few days, perhaps. She could manage that. Let her wounds heal, her head clear. She had an escape plan back in RC, a place she was heading to and that still stood. It wasn't going anywhere, and neither was she until she sorted out a ride and a bit of cash.

She sank into the soft cushions of the sofa and allowed her head to roll back and her eyes to close. It was a family sofa for sure, worn into comfort from years of use. Nestled in its embrace the ghosts of the woodwork and pipes seemed to quiet.

Tomorrow she would call Rebecca, first thing. They were supposed to meet once she was clear of the city and she knew her friend would be worrying about her. Then, she would call Chris and they would plot out their next move: he couldn't come home, there was no home any more. She would find him and together…

Footsteps in the hallway barely registered on the edge of her perception, and she paid them no mind. It was too warm here, too soft. They continued, shuffling towards the living room, the creak of the door finally urging her eyes to open.

"Carlos?"

Pyjama bottoms hung loosely on his hips, the dim light illuminating a sheen of sweat that covered his shirtless torso. His skin seemed paler somehow in the blue light, his wounds angrier. A fist pushed itself into his right eye, carelessly pushing aside damp hair.

"…so hot," he groaned.

Jill pushed herself to her feet. Whatever fleeting serenity she had found abandoned her. She reached out to him, placing concerned hands against his biceps, and almost flinched. His skin was on fire – he was burning up.

"Hey," she breathed as a chill set into her bones. "Come over here, come on."

With difficulty, she guided him over to the sofa just in time for him to collapse onto it. He was taller than her and made of muscle, almost pulled her down with him. She placed the back of her hand to his forehead and it came away damp and shaking – this wasn't normal. Wasn’t even close to normal. When she forced her glass into his hands he drained the water within it in seconds, only to then choke and spit the last of it back out. His chest heaved, every breath an overwhelming effort that sent fresh terror through her.

"I'm going to call for help," she told him. But before she could move away, not really sure of who she planned to call or what they would do, his hand shot out and grabbed her wrist with surprising strength.

"No," he growled.

She tried to wrench her arm away, but was met with an almost inhuman resistance. His nails dug in painfully, carving welts in her flesh. So far removed from the gentle touch that had tended to her wounds earlier that day.

"Let go!" she demanded. "Carlos, you're hurting me."

The sound that escaped him was feral, almost animalistic. It sent a fresh jolt of fear through her, the kind that could turn a scream into a whimper.

"No," she gasped. "No, not you, not…"

Despair mingled with terror. Every hair on her body stood on end as she tried with all of her strength to free herself. Now, she saw trails of crimson drip from beneath his hair onto his knees. The nails that drew blood now cracked and splintered. Skin began to slough from the flesh of his arms, flesh from bone. His shoulders twitched unnaturally. The growl turned to a snarl and when he finally raised his head the eyes that met hers were white, cheeks hollow, lips torn.

It caught her in a moment of grief. And that was all it took. In one move, he pinned her to the sofa and his teeth buried themselves in her neck. She felt her flesh tear, slowly, wetly. Her scream did nothing. It didn't stop the blood pouring thickly from the wound, didn't alleviate the weight of his body above hers. Her limbs weakened and in the end all she could do was close her eyes.

And then…he was gone.

There was no weight above her.

A haunting scream still seemed to echo around her as she scrambled upright. Her hands were cold, heart threatening to burst through her ribcage. The scream had taken so much from her she could barely even breathe, her mouth was so dry.

In the distance, thunderous footsteps. The door to the hallway slammed open and Carlos emerged, weapon drawn. He wore the same pyjama bottoms he had retreated to bed in, was as shirtless as her dream, but his skin was a more olive shade of normal, and while his face was pale his hair was dry and he was breathing about as unsteadily as one would expect after a short flight down a staircase.

Before she could even acknowledge his presence he had cast his gun aside and was on his knees beside her. Her eyes were everywhere but on him, but when firm hands pressed to her cheeks, when his fingers slid back into her hair she found herself with him, was finally able to draw breath that felt functional.

"Hey, hey," he soothed. "Look at me. You're ok. You're ok." He reached for one of her hands, brought it to his chest with the fingers of the other curled gently around the back of her neck. "You feel that? Feel my breathing? Focus on that. Breathe with me."

Everything was dark. The air was thick. But she felt the rise and fall of his chest beyond his pounding heart, tuned her own shuddering breaths with his. And slowly, very slowly, the edges of her vision returned. The air did not feel so thick and the moonlit highlights of the early morning revealed themselves to her once again.

She allowed herself to breathe, only breathe, for a few long minutes. Fear turned to shame, but that did not stop traitorous tears from pricking at her eyes.

"You back with me?" Carlos asked. His voice was gentle and laden with concern. She nodded feebly but he didn't move, still held her face and her hand. "Good. You scared the shit out of me, Supercop."

She winced. How could he still call her that? It was the final thing she needed to push his hands away and lean back into the sofa. It seemed that she had fallen as she slept, had woken in the same position as her nightmare. No wonder she struggled to decompress.

"Fuck," she swore. Her voice trembled even as she tried to control it. He pressed her previously neglected glass of water into her hands and she took cautious sips.

This time it was his turn to press the back of his hand to her forehead and she only half-heartedly batted it away.

"No fever," he said. "Just bad dreams."

Was that supposed to be a comfort? She didn't know how to respond, could only focus on the stinging in the corner of her eyes. She begged, pleaded with herself not to do this, not in front of him. But, in a moment she would later recall as one of her lowest, Jill Valentine wept.


	2. Ghosts & Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She hated how much he concerned himself with her, but loved it in equal measure. It felt good, to know that someone cared, but she hated that too didn't she? She wanted him to move away and mind his own business but also to pull her into his arms again so she could sink into his hard muscles and breathe him in. And she didn't like which side was winning.
> 
> ~~
> 
> The ghosts hide in the walls, and the demons crawl out of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a little longer than intended - I almost cut the phone call but it didn't feel right in the end. I also no longer know how long this story will be as it keeps evolving haha (aka I'm getting carried away with myself) - I'm guessing no longer than 5 chapters at current pace but I'm enjoying just putting words down and I hope you continue to enjoy reading them! I have ended up rewriting and cutting some things and I'm thinking about posting these excerpts over on my RE Tumblr blog so go check out tolucanights if you're interested in any of that :).
> 
> Thank you again to everyone who left comments last chapter - I really enjoy hearing your thoughts and it does help shape things to come :).

**October 2nd 1998, 11:00.**

Jill decided that she didn't like this house. It didn't feel right. There was no rush of traffic outside, no shouting, no music, no car alarms. No people. The city was what she knew, where she felt comfortable, and this was as about as far removed from that as you could get.

She had road tripped out to the Arklay mountains and even up as far as Michigan with Chris, Forest and the others in summer, and back then this silence, this calm, had been beautiful. They would sit by the campfire drinking beers, row around the lake, and at night she would lay out under the stars and Chris would regale her with tales of his days in the Air Force with pride that hurt when she knew how it had ended for him.

Was it the mansion incident? Was that what had destroyed that feeling forever? She didn't trust the calm and the quiet, didn't like what she had found there. What she had lost.

With a grunt she pushed herself to her feet. The groaning pipes played a slow movement of torment that got under her skin and into her bones.

This place was old too, smelled old. The books on the shelves around the fireplace had gathered dust and a number of the photographs that hung above it were older than she was.

She could almost hear the ghosts in this place.

What was taking Carlos so long? He said the town was no more than a forty-five minute drive away. He had been gone almost two hours. It didn't take that long to work through a grocery list.

Ice worked its way through her veins.

Had he been spotted? Had Umbrella found him? What if they traced his journey back here? She should get her gun at least.

Jill moved towards the hallway with a one-track mind.

She stopped.

Her gun was on the coffee table. Barely a few feet away from her. Where she always kept it.

She screamed in frustration and was sure some of the ghosts screamed back.

"That's it," she fumed, picking up her firearm and shoving it into the waistband of her oversized jeans. "That's _fucking_ it."

Heavy footsteps took her down the hallway and out the front door into the cool air.

That was better. Now she could breathe. Now she could _think_.

Carlos was taking his time was all. And she knew that now, with the breeze raising goosebumps on her arms and willing feeling back into her skin. While she had wanted to join him the cautious part of her had recognised how bad an idea that was. All it would have taken was one wrong person to recognise her and they were fucked. And of the two of them Carlos looked the most human-presenting at the moment.

She hated how useless that made her feel. She probably could have hotwired the car in the night and taken off but her body still felt as though it had been through hell and then some – she needed more time. And where would that have left Carlos? Stranded until the inevitable? After everything he had done for her, she couldn't do that to him.

Neither of them had slept since her rude awakening in the early hours of the morning. Truth be told, she didn't think Carlos had slept before that. She thought for sure that he would have walked her back to bed and barely been able to look at her the next day. But he hadn't. As soon as the tears started pouring he had found tissues and he gripped her hand so tightly she would have protested under any other circumstance. He had not pulled her into his arms as Chris would have done, had not shushed her, told her it was alright, that he was there, and stroked her hair as she cried it out. He just…let her. On her own terms. Didn't judge, didn't say anything, didn't leave.

When she had cried her last he had joined her on the sofa, offered her another tissue and maintained his silence.

_"I'm sorry," she laughed bitterly, pawing the last of the moisture away from her cheeks. "This isn't me."_

_"This is a human after trauma," Carlos said, softly. "This is…more put-together than I feel, I'll be honest about that."_

Then, somehow, as if it was an excuse for her behaviour, she had started talking about Arklay, about the friends she had lost, about what they had seen, about how they had been used. She told him everything. About Joseph, disemboweled in front of her; Kenneth, bleeding out over her gloved hands; Forest, and how she had picked up the pieces of Chris after he had been forced to put his close friend down; Richard, how he gave his life for her; Wesker, betraying them all for nothing; Irons, how he had gaslit them all and placed her under effective house arrest; Brad, who risked his life to warn her about the Nemesis and ended up infected for his troubles.

She had never spoken to anyone like this, not an outsider. Even the survivors had not truly discussed it with one another. It had become taboo – they all knew what had happened and none of them had any desire to relive it. It was cathartic in a way she had not expected. To tell it all, bare bones, to someone who swore vehemently in the right places, who kept reaching out then catching himself, who got angrier the more that she spilled.

Then, and only then, had she folded into his embrace. She couldn't be sure who made the first move but she remembered clearly the comfort, the warmth, and the gentleness. Every intent, of chasing away her demons, of sucking the poison from her wounds, was conveyed respectfully and intimately. And when they eventually pulled away, his arm remained loosely around her and she was okay with this.

They had chatted most of the rest of the way to dawn, had even laughed a time or two. He was a damn funny guy when he got going.

He was also carrying baggage of his own, she didn't need the pained tiredness in his eyes to tell her that. But for all her gentle prodding he had not been ready to share and she wasn't about to tear it out of him.

So here she stood, wishing he was here like that would make her feel better. It was ridiculous. She was getting too used to his company. Had started to enjoy it, even.

As though on cue a car appeared on the horizon, trundling towards the farmhouse at a reserved pace. She smiled, laughed a little. Then she scolded herself.

When he finally pulled into the farmyard she rooted her heels in the gravel and waited for him to emerge.

"Hey!" he greeted curiously as he let the car door slam behind him. "What are you doing out here?"

"Needed some fresh air," she said.

Carlos's eyes moved over her as he drew closer and a look of concern crept onto his face.

"Jesus, Jill, are you not cold?"

So far she had failed to realise just how hunched up she was and just how prominent the bumps along her arms were. But when his hands ran up her arms, when a fresh tingle traveled over her skin she shivered.

"Apparently."

His frown deepened. She hated how much he concerned himself with her, but loved it in equal measure. It felt good, to know that someone cared, but she hated that too didn't she? She wanted him to move away and mind his own business but also to pull her into his arms again so she could sink into his hard muscles and breathe him in. And she didn't like which side was winning.

"Go inside, I'll bring this in," he said.

"Don't be silly, I'm not going to freeze to death in five minutes."

Carlos chuckled.

"You underestimate how much I bought."

When he opened the trunk an incredulous "wow" escape her. There was not a square inch of the trunk that some form of produce had not been squashed into.

"What on Earth did you get?"

"Mostly non-perishables," Carlos said, holding back another laugh. "Some toiletries, medicine, I picked up some more clothes for you, those newspapers you asked for…and enough beer for both of us for about a week."

Jill looked at the crates that took up at least half of the trunk space.

"How much are you expecting us to drink?"

"Some is to leave behind. A thank you for letting us stay. But I also picked up a bottle of Anejo Especial. If you're nice, I might share it."

Jill rolled her eyes. Rum had never really been her thing.

"I'll stick with the beer, thank you."

The clothes he had picked were surprisingly ok. Nothing fancy, nothing special, but closer to her normal style than the hand-me-downs she was wearing. There was another bag too, one that contained toiletries, beauty items and a few feminine products. She tried not to imagine him picking those out, but the awkward images crept in regardless.

"You really didn't have to do this," she said.

"Yes I did," he said. "When you're feeling better I'll take you down and you can pick some things out for yourself, but this should do for now."

Her pride would not let her accept this gift, but a more rational part of her realised just how essential it was. She had been using his body wash, his shampoo, hadn't brushed her teeth in days. The clothes she barely filled probably belonged to a girl much younger in a generation long gone and they hardly helped her feel human.

But she had to compromise. So, she pulled out a bottle of body wash and frowned dramatically at it.

"Are you trying to say I smell?"

"I'm saying you smell like Old Spice and it's weirding me out."

* * *

**October 2nd 1998, 13:05**

Carlos had not slept in days. Maybe a nap here and there: a thin, flimsy imitation of good rest. But actual sleep? Nah. It was getting fucking old. He was exhausted in mind, body and spirit. Healing wounds hurt more, his head was a constant ball of aching pressure and he couldn't think straight.

He had slipped the Unisom into his pocket straight from the counter, kept it separate from the other groceries – if Jill saw it she would have questions and he really didn't feel up to answering them right now. All he needed was one night. Just one. That should be all it took to help get him back on track.

Really? Who was he kidding? They had hardly been sleeping in hotels in Raccoon. A couple hours here and there, if they were lucky. Make the most of what you've got, boys, because who knew when the next rest would come. It would take days of good sleep to get him feeling even remotely human again.

He no longer felt the rush of adrenaline that had kept him going for so long, only fatigue. So why then could he not sleep? It had taken everything to hide from Jill the fact that he could barely carry the crates of beer into the kitchen. What happened if Umbrella decided to go after them after all? He'd be a liability if he couldn't even throw a punch.

With more effort than it needed he hauled aside another cardboard box, coughing as years of dust rose like a mushroom cloud from the archives of the house. The attic. Where things went to die. He recalled actually enjoying spending time up here when he was younger. The Jacksons always had been sentimental and it showed in their meticulous document hoarding. There were records here dating back to the Ortega line's original emigration from Colombia in the 1940's, all the way back through the Jackson line's native roots.

But that wasn't what he was looking for today.

A solitary light bulb swung but a few inches above his head, suspended only by the wire that powered it, stapled into a beam. The breeze outside sounded like a gale up here and seemed to find new ways to chill the air.

The shadows never stayed in one place. As the bulb swayed, so too did they. They raised the hairs on the back of his neck but he focused stubbornly at the boxes before him, casting each one aside as it yielded more useless papers.

Something slumped in the back corner, sliding to the floor with a bone-chilling slither.

_An uncomfortable silence had fallen around the command post, concealed only by the quiet chatter of the other platoon members and the occasional sob from the civilian tent. Carlos didn't like it. He was no stranger to violence but the chaos he knew was the omnipresent sound of gunfire. He'd have even taken a few screams over this – screams, at least, indicated that there was life out there._

_And what the hell was that smell? It crept up on them, barely perceptible one minute then damn near overpowering the next. A couple of the guys had already been seen puking their guts up. The civilians were terrified – they couldn't keep them there, they had to find somewhere sheltered, somewhere indoors._

_Something stirred. He felt it before he heard it, felt every hair on his body stand to rapt attention and the meager rations in his stomach slosh uncomfortably._

_Murphy felt it too, and Carlos didn't think he'd ever seen his friend turn so pale._

_There was a scream from the park entrance, a few shots, and then a roar of silence before the chaos unfolded. Before anyone had a chance to raise the alarm the courtyard was filled with undead, the stench overwhelming every other sense now._

_Carlos looked on in horror as one of those things tackled a civilian, its teeth sinking into her neck before they had even hit the ground. There was no time to fire, not a chance to save her. Her screams gurgled into a horrible shrieking exhalation, but the thing kept going, tearing flesh from bone. The wet, bone-grinding sound seemed louder than anything else._

_Even as he fired back into the descending horde they pressed on; groaning, stumbling forms falling over one another, grasping at the warm fleeing bodies around them. Even when they were floored they kept coming, sometimes barely half a body. One had detached itself from where a fallen lighting rig had pinned it against the ground, unfurling intestines as it dragged itself along, fingernails splitting in its desperate search for food._

Carlos's eyes were closed tightly and he breathed through his nose as the memories washed over him. One breath, two, three…four...

The silence remained undisturbed. No rotten smell of decaying flesh. He was alone.

The light bulb had ceased its swaying when he opened his eyes again, but the shadows that lingered were no less disturbing.

Was he shaking? He looked down at his hands, held them out. Bruises extended over the knuckles of his right, a few scrapes on his left…and they were indeed trembling.

With haste he reached for another box, the dust choking him now. He thumbed through the papers within and let out the breath he had been holding. Gregory's maps. Old, but still usable. Just what he was looking for.

He didn't glance back as he lifted the box into weakened arms and half-stumbled out of the dark attic.

The warm light of the hallway chased the last of the chill from his bones and he shrugged it off, put it down to insomnia.

Jill was still leafing through newspapers in the living room when he brought the box to her. The television buzzed in the background, signal not great but it was enough. A newsreader spoke of Raccoon City in a sombre tone, the images behind her cycling from a thriving city to what he assumed was the crater that now stood in its place.

"Fixed the aerial," Jill told him, looking up briefly from her reading material. "Still needs some work, but it's good for now. Same bulletins keep repeating, over and over, nothing much new."

If she noticed anything off about his composure she did not mention it.

"What's the situation?"

She cleared space for him on the sofa beside her and turned back to the front page of the newspaper she had been poring over.

**_Midwestern Nightmare: The Fall of Raccoon City_** read the headline.

"It's all they're reporting at the moment," she said. "Seems like they've scaled back the quarantine to state-wide rather than regional. The immediate neighbouring counties were evacuated and those just past that have been taken over by the military. They've established a quarantine zone and are processing what they estimate to be a couple thousand survivors, so there's some good news. Outside of that it looks to be business as usual, but they're running checks on everyone crossing state borders and even county borders closer to ground zero."

Carlos scanned the article with concern.

"They don't even know what they're dealing with," he said.

Jill raised her eyebrows and tilted her head in agreement.

"At the very least they seem to recognise that bites can transmit the infection. They've yet to have any cases outside of the quarantine zone and they've locked it down pretty hard. RC's problem was that it didn't act quickly enough. By the time they knew they had a problem, it was already too late. Infections spread tenfold overnight."

As she said this, she handed him another newspaper, from which she had apparently gleaned this information.

Carlos did not argue with any of this. From briefing to deployment, riot control became a full-scale war effort. Even Mikhail had not expected the full extent of what awaited them.

"I can't believe I missed all this," Jill said. "They must have been filtering the news. I hadn't left my apartment in a week but I don't recall half of this being reported."

"If what you say about Umbrella paying off half the city is true, I don't think that's an unreasonable assumption."

If that were the case, how many people in the city had they actually hoped to save? How many had they counted on taking the truth to their grave?

When he looked back at Jill she was already rifling through the box of maps.

"If they're monitoring state borders, we're stuck for a while," he said.

"A week or two," she agreed. "By then the virus will either have petered out or there won't be borders any more."

The way she said this, so casually, chilled him to the bone.

Then she paused, sat back, forgot about the maps for a moment.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I have one gear, and… Just-"

"Sitting round doing nothing doesn't feel right?"

There was something in her eyes when she looked at him. It was almost undefinable. Intense. Grateful. Afraid.

Her head moved slowly; a barely-perceptible nod.

And then she smiled.

Fuck.

He was back on the subway platform, watching her watch him back as the train took her to presumed safety. That one hint of a smile she had given him, that breathy, exasperated 'ok'. It had been a stupid joke, and he had only told it to wind her up, but she had smiled and it had been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

_"You want me to call the train back?" Tyrell asked. Carlos looked to him as the tiled walls seemed to rebuild themselves around him – of course, the mission._

_"'Course not."_

_Tyrell stared._

_"I've been talking to you for two straight minutes. You get a single thing I said?"_

_"Hmm?"_

Tyrell had ribbed him the entire way to the police station. He deserved it, really. He appreciated pretty ladies, as did a lot of men in his line of work– they made life worth living, gave colour to a dark world. But they were not the be all and end all, not worth getting distracted and losing all professionalism over. He knew better than that. But this one – he had watched her walk through fire to take on hell. In his time he had met a lot of colourful characters but not once had he met anyone like her, man or woman. He was in awe of her strength, her tenacity, her fire, and maybe a little intimidated by it too.

It had been easy to forget about that in the heat of it all, when their shared goal was immediate survival. But now, with nothing in the way, with their lives temporarily guaranteed, with her departure constantly imminent…maybe Tyrell had been on to something.

_"She won't be waiting for you, you know." Tyrell's voice crackled through his radio._

_Carlos swore._

_"T, don't scare me like that." He drove his heel into the temple of the corpse in front of him for good measure. He'd had enough jump scares in this place. And what was it? A Police Station? Nah, he'd been in more of those than he'd care to admit. This place was a house of mirrors._

_"I'm just saying. Soon as the train pulls into Fox Park she'll be gone. She ain't sticking around for your sorry ass."_

That was the reality, wasn't it? This was the dream. Her with him, sharing meals, shooting the shit, acting like friends. But when things eased up, once wounds had healed and sense had returned…she would be gone.

He would have given anything to have seen her as just another survivor, but it wasn't that simple. They had been through too much together, his story was intertwined with hers now. He was invested in her, in this, in all of it. He couldn't walk away, didn't want to talk her into staying and knew that she wouldn't allow him to go with her. She was too proud for that. This was her war, it was the vengeance of S.T.A.R.S. He was just a supporting character, a side-story, soon to be forgotten.

It felt like an impossible situation and sitting here with her, watching her plan out her next move…it felt like preparing a limb for amputation.

* * *

**October 2nd 1998, 15:34**

Jill stared at the phone. Would this time be the charm? Twice already she had tried to call Rebecca. Twice she had failed to answer. There was always the possibility that she had remembered the number wrong, or that her friend was simply away from the phone, out of the house or otherwise occupied. But her brain painted a more morbid tale, and she was beginning to worry.

Finally, she reached forward, dialed in a now-familiar number and listened to it ring on the other end.

Five seconds.

Ten.

Twenty.

Thirty.

One minute.

"Veronica Hazelwood speaking."

Jill froze, but only for a second. Relief washed over her, but her heart continued to pound furiously.

"Veronica, it's Ellen," she said.

Another pause. She heard a sharp intake of breath and it took everything in her to choke back her emotions.

"Jill," Rebecca's shaky voice said. "Oh my God. You're- you're okay! We were so worried. Hang on, I'm gonna put you on speaker."

There was a heavy click and ambient sounds crept into the call. There was shuffling, footsteps. Rebecca's voice was muffled now, calling to someone somewhere in the house. Then there were more footsteps, urgent this time.

"Jill?"

"Barry?"

What was he doing there? He should have been in Canada, with his family. She voiced this concern, heart pounding in her ears now. It felt so good to hear their voices. So good she feared what it may do to her, so she lowered her voice lest Carlos wandered in, overhead and came running to her in concern.

"My family is ok," Barry told her. "But when I saw the news I knew I was no good sitting on my ass any more. Are _you_ okay? What happened? Where are you?"

Jill smiled, laughed a little.

"I'm ok," she promised them both. "A little beaten up but I'm safe. Just resting up. I'm stuck here for a little while but once things have quietened down I'm going to head down south like I'd planned. Would be good to see you both again?"

"Of course!" Rebecca insisted. "Listen, we will run by your apartment and pick up your things, why don't you just meet us at the summerhouse?"

Fortunately for all involved she had managed to plot out an emergency escape plan prior to her own personal lockdown in Raccoon. They had known that shit would hit the fan eventually, so she had sent her passport, some money and essential supplies out of town with Rebecca. The idea was that Rebecca would deposit them in a nondescript apartment owned by a friend and if Jill ever needed to split she would swing by, pick them up, lay low for a night if needed, and then begin a journey to a more remote location (their 'summerhouse') out of state. From there, the others would meet her and they would figure out their next move. She was only a few days away from enacting this plan when Raccoon fell. Talk about timing.

"That sounds good," she said.

"Is Brad with you?" Rebecca asked.

Shit.

Jill swallowed. Brad's death was one she had tried not to dwell on. What was one more after the others? She had not seen him torn apart, had not seen him turn. What if he was still alive? What if he had made it out?

Alas, Carlos had handed her something shortly after their rough landing. Something that confirmed what she had already known in her heart of hearts. Brad's ID card. It may as well have been a death certificate. Her sadness was matched only by the guilt with which Carlos apologised and explained that there had been no other option, as though he needed to prove that to her. He had kept the card, had known she would want to know what had happened to her colleague.

"Oh no…" Rebecca interpreted her silence with her usual flawless deduction.

"There was nothing I could do," Jill breathed. "He died a hero in the end."

Rebecca laughed softly.

"Of course he did. Did anyone else make it out?"

"Not with me. I ran into Kendo, he said he was going to make his own way out."

"Good," said Barry. "I'll call Joe, see if he's heard anything."

"Are you sure you're ok?" Rebecca asked. "I feel awful thinking about you being on your own after all that."

Jill moved over to the window, looked out to the car in the yard beyond and the man with his head beneath the hood, elbow-deep in grease and surrounded with tools.

"I'm not alone," she said with a smile. "I had help getting out, will be staying with him until it's safe to move."

"Him, huh?" Rebecca teased, before her tone turned more serious. "Are you sure you can trust him?"

"He saved my life. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him."

Outside, Carlos slammed down the hood and settled into the driver's seat.

"Will he be joining us?"

She considered this as the car outside revved into life, sounding a little healthier than before but still not perfect. Inside, Carlos rested his head in his arms against the steering wheel for a moment then exited, visibly frustrated.

"I don't know…" she said.

Did she want him to? Undoubtedly. Was it right? That, she still wasn't sure of. She trusted him unequivocally, but there was still that prejudice in the back of her mind. They worked well together, and he had the right skill set. But something pushed her towards the negative. This was not his fight. He would make it so in a heartbeat, but she would never ask that of him. And maybe she was afraid. Afraid because she liked him, because she enjoyed his company, because when he lifted the bottom of his grease-stained T-shirt to wipe his face her eyes lingered a little too long on the trail of dark hair that vanished beneath the waistband of his pants. She knew this feeling growing inside of her and it frightened her. Perhaps it existed because she was wounded and in need of a type of comfort she had not found in months. Or perhaps it was genuine. That frightened her more. She couldn't afford to expose herself like this, wouldn't accept the responsibility or the pain it invited.

"We trust your judgement, Jill," said Barry. "And we need all the help we can get. There are going to be a lot of angry people after this. The more of them we can get on our side the better."

* * *

**October 3rd 1998, 03:52.**

They were working, the sleeping pills. Carlos knew this only when he woke to the vague feeling of being watched and had to steel himself for a moment against another wave of fatigue.

He looked over to the door, as he always did when he woke. He had left it open last night and it was instinct, almost, to check that Jill was ok before attempting anything else. She would have been peacefully asleep, of course. Only this time she wasn't.

"Something up?" he asked groggily, squinting at her familiar silhouette in the doorway.

She said nothing.

"Ok, sleep well…"

Another wave crashed over him, nearly pulled him back beneath the currents, but he heard the soft sound of footsteps against carpet and a light pressure on the bed. It wasn't enough to coax him awake, but the pressure against his thighs was. The weight that settled on his hips…that definitely had his attention.

When he opened his eyes this time it was to see her, staring down at him, eyes wide and…beautiful. Had they always been so blue?

"You saved me," she said. The purple pucker of skin that was her healing wound seemed to stand out more now in the dim twilight. "You carried me to that hospital, you treated me, cleaned my wounds, stitched me up."

Carlos blinked up at her, dumbfounded. He found it difficult to concentrate with her gentle weight pressing against a particularly sensitive part of him.

"Just passing the time."

The hands that appeared on his chest stole all reasonable thought. Fingertips, gentle and soft, slid into his chest hair and coaxed forth an aching groan. She did not leave him with a moment to question her actions, didn't even deign to leave him with breath in his lungs, as she leaned forward and captured his lips with the gentlest of manoeuvres.

There was no will to breathe left in him, no will to do anything but return her kiss with feverish enthusiasm. A sigh, barely a sound at all, escaped her. A moan, urging him on, encouraging the hand that snaked up her side.

He had to be dreaming, had to be. No way she felt this good, no way _he_ elicited this sort of behaviour from her. To see her so unguarded, so _raw_ , felt almost illegal.

Throwing her head back, she removed her shirt in one smooth movement and moonlight played across the curves of her breasts. She seemed almost to glow. Blue truly was her colour.

Her hands, small and delicate compared to his own, guided his touch to places that elicited the most enticing of sounds. Her bottom lip was pink, bruised from the teeth she dragged it under, eyes half-lidded and hungry. He tried to sit upright, tried to kiss every inch of her beautiful chest, but she pushed him back with surprising strength.

"I'm down with that," he breathed, bucking his hips against hers as she leaned down and kissed him with the fury he had seen her wield every day since they had first met.

She was a tsunami crashing over him. He'd never been so hard in his life. The longing to touch her, to make her feel even half as good as he did right now, was overwhelming, but the grip she had locked on his wrists bound him in place.

Nails raked up his side, hips pinned his to the mattress. He couldn't have moved if he wanted to.

This didn't feel right. He _couldn't_ move now, couldn't even turn his head. The darkness seemed suddenly more profound and something pungent lingered just on the edge of his olfactory senses.

That smell…

Carlos opened his eyes fully as a jolt of pure terror ricocheted around his ribcage. He was back in Raccoon, back at their command post again, screaming at the locked gate. The mob bore down on them all, the overpowering stench of death edging ever closer and closer.

Jill's eyes weren't blue. They were grey, bloodshot and unseeing. The wound on her arm leaked a foul-smelling purplish fluid, and the skin on her chest was cracked and glistening with blood. She hovered above him like a predator circling prey.

"No…cure," she croaked, her breath hot against his cheek. He still couldn't move, was paralyzed in place. "You…lied…"

"No, no, please," he begged.

A pure, unrelenting sense of evil hung in the air. Evil from which he had no escape, could only watch helplessly as it sized him up, toyed with him.

"No… _cure_. Lied. _LIIIIIED_."

The nails that had previously suspended him in an unfamiliar bliss plunged into the flesh beneath his rib cage. It was agony, but he still could not move, not even as her skin began to warp until bones and tentacles tore through dry flesh. He couldn't even scream.

And then she was gone. Now, he could move. Still couldn't breathe. But he was alone, tangled in damp sheets. Then she was at his door again, frozen. Seconds later she was at his side, clammy hands on his skin. He threw them aside, the sounds he made not quite human.

Carlos jumped out of the other side of the bed and ran towards the small bathroom at the end of the hallway, letting the door slam shut behind him. He had barely lifted the toilet seat when the remains of his late dinner ejected themselves. Damp hair clung to his face and his neck and his entire body trembled.

Over the next few seconds he fought for his breath and found it somewhere in the realisation that he was right – he had been dreaming.

But it had been so _real_. Every detail perfect, every sound and sensation flawless. It was his room, exactly as it had been when he had fallen asleep.

The stench lingered with him, the acrid heat of the Jill-thing's rotten breath clinging to his skin. The hatred in its voice chided him still; it's slow movements, like some unholy Lovecraftian horror toying with its prey, played over and over again in his mind.

He vomited once more into the toilet bowl, apparently for good measure, and that brought colour back to his vision. An ache had settled around his ribcage, his lungs were on fire, and a throbbing pain began to pound in his head.

A faint knock on the door made him jump.

"Carlos?" Jill's voice called to him from beyond. "Are you ok? Can I come in?"

When he did not reply the door opened with force and she was at his side a moment later. Jill. The Jill he knew?

Her pyjamas…

Slowly, the little rose pattern blossomed, became crimson patches against the cream. The stitching in her arm had come undone and that foul ichor seeped over porcelain skin. Those blue eyes were still grey, but they held an intelligence they had previously been devoid of. Bloodied fingers reached out to him, the bones of her knuckles exposed. And that smell…

"Get away!" he pleaded. "Stay away."

The hand pulled back slightly, shoulders shrank away. Seizing the opportunity, he crawled backwards into the shower cubicle. Blood had begun to ooze from between the cracked tiles, the light dimmed, and though he pulled the shower curtain across the Jill-thing yanked it back a moment later. He was a whimpering mess, eyes closed tightly, begging her to leave him, pleading with his brain to snap out of this and let him wake alone and comfortable in his bed.

Something crashed into him from above and he cried out. A deafening roar, moisture soaking through him. Cold moisture. Clean. Not blood. Water?

Carlos flinched as something grabbed him. No, not grabbed. Held. Pulled him close to something soft, whispered gently to him.

"Come back to me," the voice whispered. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard. It trembled, soothed, reassured him. "Nothing to fear, it's ok. You're safe. I've got you."

He believed it. Not right away but as the cold water washed over him, as long fingers gently stroked his hair, as he listened to a heart beat close to his ear, the smell dissipated and the tension in his muscles slowly released.

When he opened his eyes the shower was clean and he was soaked through, pyjamas and all.

And he was not alone.

Jill did not relax her hold on him, continued to whisper softly as the water washed over them both. Not the Jill-thing. Jill. The real deal. Stitched-up arm, rose-embroidered pyjamas and all.

He was exhausted. Even more so than before his nightmare-ridden sleep. And now he was ashamed. But she said nothing, just held him.

So he sat there, quietly, and let himself drown in her.


	3. Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Is this hero complex thing a permanent fixture?" she asked.
> 
> "That would depend."
> 
> "On what?"
> 
> "Is it doing anything for you?"
> 
> ~~
> 
> In which wounds are sutured and fears assuaged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So when I started posting this I was a couple chapters ahead in what I was currently writing. Now I've sadly caught up so while I have been trying to post a chapter a week, there may be a little bit more of a delay in the next one and I apologise in advance for that. There should be two more chapters after this one and the last is likely to be a little shorter. The climax of the story is drawing ever closer, but I've yet to decide with myself just how detailed a...uh...climax that will be (I am 100% open for input on this) so stay tuned!
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who commented last chapter, it really makes me so happy to read them all.

**July 28th 1998, 02:00. Raccoon City.**

_He was drinking in his boxers at 2am again. At this point, she didn't ever expect to get through to him. And he was used to her scolding him, shouting, threatening to leave. But she never did. Because the darkness scared her too._

_Tonight, she joined him. Minus the whiskey and plus a little more clothing, but the sentiment remained the same._

_"Are you even trying to sleep any more?" Jill asked._

_Chris shook his head then raised his glass._

_"This was supposed to help," he said._

_She didn't bother to ask if it did._

_"Is me being here helping either of us? I still can't sleep, I still can't close my eyes without…"_

_It had only been two nights, was only ever meant to be one. But that one in the middle, the one spent in her own apartment, had almost killed her. Maybe literally. Every howl of wind at her window, every footstep from the apartment above, set her on edge. Chris at least had a top-floor apartment and double glazing. And when she had called him at 3am and he had been as wide awake as she was, she recognised that maybe he needed to not be alone too and that didn't make her feel so bad about it._

_"I don't even know any more," Chris answered. "How the fuck do we come back from this, Jill? There isn't a therapist in the world that could rationalise this shit."_

_"I'll let you know when I've figured that out."_

* * *

**October 3rd 1998, 08:00**

_"Oh no, oh no, oh no. Jill, help me."_

_"Brad…"_

_"What are you doing? Jill, please. Don't leave me. Don't, please-"_

Jill didn't even wake with a start this time, barely breathed a sound.

It was morning. The birdsong was back and the light that leaked from beneath the curtains was yellow not blue.

Trembling hands found her face and she dragged her fingers down her cheeks. Guilt as well as fear now, huh? Great. Just what she needed.

She let out a shaky breath and took a moment to compose herself before she registered the pressure on the mattress to her left.

"Shit."

She hadn't meant to fall asleep. Hadn't even thought it was possible.

Carlos continued to snooze, his hair still damp and splayed haphazardly over his face. It took everything in her to not reach over and push it back, to not stroke his cheek sympathetically and wriggle herself closer. Because from this distance and at this angle she found it incredibly difficult to ignore just how handsome he was.

She had slept beside him that night. Well, 'slept' would have been a stretch. She had laid beside him and watched him all morning, the insufferable need to protect and serve keeping her from more than an apparent light snooze. Every time he twitched, every time he shifted suddenly, she would squeeze his hand or stroke his arm and he would settle.

She didn't even know why she had done what she did. She knew only that she would sit on the floor of her shower back in RC on her worst nights, recalled how the prick of falling water against her skin had helped ground her. She knew how, in her worst moments alone at the end of it all, she had longed for someone, anyone, to remind her that what she feared was not real.

And so that is what she had done for him. She had held him until the last of his strength left him, helped him towel off his hair then crawl back into bed. And when she should have left him, when she should have changed and slipped into her own dry sheets, he had whispered something in his daze.

_"No te vayas."_

She didn't know Spanish, didn't know exactly what he had said to her but she had found herself gravitating towards him, slipping beneath the covers in her damp pyjamas, and that is where she had woken.

Because that was the answer to Chris's question, wasn't it? _How do we come back from this?_ The answer in the end was 'together'. Only when they had begun to support one another, when they had picked up their phones, when the five of them had met in Bar Jack without the others for the first time, when they had allowed themselves company, had they been able to begin to move on.

It would have been a lie if she claimed finding Carlos like that hadn't terrified her. He had been completely disconnected, didn't even recognise her when she tried to help. It was as she laid there, watching him twitch in his sleep that she realised she was looking at herself a few months ago and it wasn't a pretty sight.

The open Unisom packet on his bedside table confirmed the insomnia theory she had been working with and the amber liquid beside it loaned credence to another theory around what exactly had happened the previous night.

Jill still worried, even as he stirred in the earlier stages of waking. She hadn't worried nearly as much about herself. But she had dealt with Chris in this stage of his grief and he had been an absolute nightmare. She feared that male pride would draw a similar parallel with Carlos, and she spent most of the night dwelling on it, wondering if she had the strength herself right now to see him through it. There was also a different kind of hurt, the kind that seeing him in pain had inflicted. She would have vanished the memories of Raccoon, and her with them, if it eased his suffering. She could deal with the longing his kind eyes, floppy hair and muscular arms inspired but this more emotional one was something else entirely.

When he opened his eyes this time it was with a gentler motion. He rolled onto his back, squinting, wrinkling his nose and groaning lightly as he stretched his muscles. He seemed surprised to see her.

"Good morning, sunshine," she greeted.

For a moment he looked around, felt the damp sheets and then closed his eyes and drew a shuddering breath. When his eyes opened again he looked directly up at the ceiling.

"Jill…"

"Sleep well?"

"I think so… How much of last night was a dream?"

Slowly, he propped himself up and reached towards the water at his bedside.

"You were having night terrors," she said, attempting to maintain a neutral tone. "You woke up, I followed you to the bathroom then I helped you get back into bed. Anything else was all you."

An unexpected air of disappointment fell over him and she frowned. He drained half of the glass but held on to the rest. At the very least whatever sleep he had found seemed sufficient for him to be adequately alert almost immediately. She envied that.

With a little effort, Jill pushed herself up and propped a pillow against the headboard so that she could join him.

"A little advice," she offered. "Don't mix sleeping pills with alcohol. It never ends well."

Carlos had not returned his gaze to her yet, and he made no attempt to now. He looked down into his glass, then closed his eyes, his jaw locked. What did he fear? Even in the worst of the Raccoon troubles she had never seen him like this.

"I'm sorry you had to see that," he said. And he was, for whatever reason. Shame dripped from every word and she was unsettled to find that it hurt more than the memory of him cornered and terrified in the bathroom.

"This is a human after trauma," she said, repeating his own words back to him. Then, she considered her next words carefully. Part of her hesitated, out of shame of her own, out of that destructive habit to internalise everything. But he needed her to say it, and she wasn't about to save her own pride at his expense. "I've been here, Carlos. I know it's not easy. I also know how far out of your control this is. But I meant what I said, whether or not you heard it. I'm here. And if you need to talk, even if you don't know what to say, please talk to me. Don't end up like I did, don't try to work through this alone."

Carlos laughed but it was devoid of humour.

"You'd think I'd never seen death before," he said. Still not looking at her.

"Had you seen the dead rise?"

"No."

"Then it's not the same."

Now he looked at her, and what she saw in his eyes almost broke her heart. Gone was the cocky, confident soldier. Gone was the man that made her laugh when she needed it the most, that had taken the lead when she needed someone to follow.

Here now was someone learning how to be human in a world where the core principles of life ingrained in everyone at an early age had been proven woefully incorrect. And she knew exactly what he was thinking. Where did he go from here? How did he process this, how did he move forward? How did he forget the things he had seen but remember the people he had lost?

"How did you…?" he started to say. But he stopped, winced at his words and eyed the rum a little more longingly now.

"Lots of pills," she said. There was an attempt to force a smile but she didn't think he noticed. She had tried therapy, a whole hour of it. But what good was therapy when your therapist thought you were delusional? "And friends. They helped more than the pills, actually."

Looking back, it was when they had started to filter out of Raccoon City that her tenuous grip on sanity had begun to slip.

"Did you sleep alright?" Carlos asked.

"Not even close."

At this, he moved his right arm and slid it almost skillfully around her shoulders, resting atop the pillow at her back.

"That train goes both ways, you know," he said. "If we're getting through this together, that's how we do it…together."

Jill thought about this, but her body seemed to move of its own accord, leaned into him, slid down a little and allowed her head to rest, just barely, against his shoulder.

He wasn't Chris, she could see that. Chris was stubborn enough that the simple act of cracking through his armor was a monumental task, and volatile enough that simply trying was hazardous at best. And maybe there was something to be gained from confiding in Carlos. Perhaps they couldn't draw strength from one another but they could pool what they had.

More than that, she realised now that she would do anything to protect him from the pain she had felt and if opening up a little would help with that, if it meant that he wouldn't have another night like the last, she would cut herself wide open.

"I think I can do that."

* * *

**October 3rd 1998, 12:15.**

There were a lot of memories in this place. Good memories. It was an unusual comfort for someone who had spent most of the last few years dwelling on bad ones and collecting a few more. But now, something sinister lurked behind them. An omnipresent force that lingered over Carlos when he slept and was there waiting when he woke.

It was more than Raccoon City. It was guilt. Frustration. Fear at not knowing what came next. It was nothing new. All Raccoon had succeeded in doing was throwing him completely off-centre.

Old wounds ached, but he paid them no mind as the cool fall breeze settled on his skin and the clip in his left hand slid smoothly into the gun in his right. The range he had constructed in the yard behind the house was not the best by any stretch of the imagination, but it was perfect for what it was – a distraction, pure and simple. Because every time he paused to think, the bad memories resurfaced and he analysed every second of them, wondering what he could have done better.

If he had been more suspicious maybe he would have questioned the ambush at the command post and the carnage that followed. Perhaps he would have wondered how the gate had ended up locked, and why when shit hit the fan Nicholai was nowhere to be seen.

If he had questioned Nicholai then, would Jill have avoided infection? Would the vaccine have made it out of the city? Would Raccoon still be standing?

His features contorted in anger. Just thinking about it, thinking about all the lives they could have saved, boiled his blood. Greed, corruption, selfishness…what the fuck was wrong with the world? Why did he keep seeing this shit over and over again?

He fired and the can exploded, sending baked bean remnants splattering into the dirt.

Was this where the circle closed?

He shivered again, but the breeze was absent. He knew this road.

_There were only a few rings before the line connected and a cheerful voice greeted him on the other end._

_"Connor Jackson here."_

_"Hey Connor, it's Carlos."_

_Silence. It was more than he deserved, really. He wouldn't have blamed him if he'd hung up._

_"You've got some fucking nerve calling like this, Primo." Carlos didn't think he had ever heard his cousin so angry. "Two years and not a word. Every time we see something on the news your mom calls, thinking you're dead. You know what? I'm hanging up-"_

_"No, no, don't!" Carlos pleaded. "Please!"_

_Murphy paused, looked over at Carlos and smiled in an uncomfortably knowing fashion before gathering his gear and giving his friend some space._

_"Give me one good reason."_

_"I'm back in the US," Carlos said. "I…I got a job, a real one."_

_"Sure you did." The voice on the other end did not sound convinced._

_"I don't expect you to believe me, but I can give you a number and some names, you can check."_

_Silence again. Muttered profanities._

_"Go on then. Who you working for? Lay it out."_

_"Umbrella."_

_Connor laughed. Carlos could picture him, head tilted back, hand on the receiver._

_"The pharmaceutical company? What, you get a PHD in Colombia? Or is that some code? You dealing drugs now?"_

_"Don't be fucking stupid, Connor. They've put together a PMC, I've been training with them for a few weeks now. Like I said, I can give you numbers to call if you don't believe me."_

_The laughter died._

_"You serious? How? I'd have thought you'd have some sort of record by now."_

_Surprisingly not. He'd always been good at hiding, at keeping his face covered and his name out of it. If he'd stayed there a little while longer he probably wouldn't have been so lucky but Umbrella didn't even need to do any visa magic; his dual nationality still stood._

_"I guess they thought I was worth a second chance."_

_Connor swore at this. It sounded something like 'fucking PMCs'._

_"Is that what you're looking for here?"_

_Carlos winced._

_"Nah," he said. "I don't deserve that. Not from you, not from Ma. But this is it for me. I want to make this work, I have to. But I need a place to stay when bootcamp finishes in a few weeks and I guess some nostalgic part of me misses you."_

_More silence. He could hear his cousin's heavy breathing, knew he was deep in thought. It was something. It was a hell of a lot better than the 'fuck you, goodbye' he had expected. The one he deserved._

_Carlos looked around the now-empty common area, at the brand new furniture, the fully stocked vending machines, the kitchenette and even the rack of up-to-date magazines and newspapers. This was luxury compared to what he was used to. He still couldn't quite believe his luck._

_"Ok," Connor said at last. "You can have the Farmhouse. But Carlos, I swear… You fuck this up. You take advantage of this generosity, you turn your back on this family again, that's it."_

Another crack and wet explosion, of expired peaches this time.

He hadn't called his family since their escape and he already knew what that meant. He had intended to, once he had figured out his next move. But he was no closer to that than he was two days ago and the longer he left it the worse it would be in the end.

Maybe he shouldn't call them? They'd be better off believing he was dead.

They had been right about so many things, but he had been too bull-headed to realise that. And now look at him; unemployed again after their second chance, better off only in a financial sense. He couldn't tell them why he had turned his back on Umbrella. They wouldn't believe him and even if they did what would that achieve? They would be targets. He refused to do that.

Perhaps nostalgia was why he had built the makeshift firing range in exactly the same place his uncle had built it all those years ago. There were still bullet holes in the fence. Thankfully, he was a much better shot these days.

Jill had busied herself with cleaning and he had left her to it. Funny how under any other circumstance waking up next to her would have been a dream. However he had pictured it, tasting vomit and wreathed in nightmares was far from the ideal.

How could she even look at him after last night? It was ridiculous. Cowering in the shower like an idiot, screaming at her like that, crying. It had all felt so…wrong. So out of his control. And he hated that. It wasn't him. He felt like an observer to his own actions and maybe that freaked him out more than the Jill-thing.

But she hadn't cared about that, hadn't looked at him any differently. Was she even real? Had he just imagined her; was she this figment of his imagination, a coping mechanism meant to help his sorry ass through all this? Being strong and capable wasn't enough, she had to be caring too, and she had to care about _him_. It didn't make sense, didn't fall into his pattern of luck.

Did it?

He still heard her voice, calling to him. It grounded him when his own would not. He had believed her when he didn't even have faith in himself. He knew exactly what she was going through and yet she had still found strength to bolster his when it was lost.

Carlos fired.

He had enjoyed that dream too, hadn't he? Hadn't even questioned it when she straddled him. He wondered if she really kissed like that. It seemed like she would. Firm, insistent, knew exactly what she wanted.

'Stop thinking about her like that.'

Another shot.

Why was he relying so much on her?

Another.

'Get a fucking grip, Carlos, you're a grown man.'

Another two.

"I think that one's dead."

Carlos jumped, swore and bit his tongue to prevent further expletives rolling out.

"Jill, I have a loaded gun!" he cried. "Don't…don't do that."

She smiled apologetically and picked up the G19 from the bench at his side.

"So what are we going to?" she asked, half-heartedly lining up a shot. "Best of 5?"

Carlos raised an eyebrow.

"I'm serious!"

She wasn't. But he played along.

"Alright," he chuckled. " _Supercop_. Think you can beat me?"

As he said this her stance changed. She settled into it more, relaxed her shoulders, and a look of deep concentration overcame her. She wasn't just a cop. That much was obvious before her shot hit its mark and the poor innocent beer bottle shattered into tiny shards of glass.

"You ex-forces?" he found himself asking. "You have to be. No way you rolled into S.T.A.R.S. fresh from high school."

Jill smiled faintly.

"No, we were rising stars," she said, laughing at her own joke. "I was army for a while. Trained with Delta Force too."

"No shit? I thought they were all-male."

"They are," she said, smirking now. "I'm just that good."

She let off another shot, this one clipping a weighted can but not quite knocking it off.

"Oof, unlucky," Carlos said. He wasn't quite able to hide his smugness. At this Jill raised her eyebrows and signaled dramatically to her glaring injury.

Left arm. She was right-handed. Did he point that out? Of course not.

"How about you?" she asked as he demolished the next two targets with ease. "How'd someone like you end up manning guns for Umbrella?"

There was a compliment hidden somewhere in there, he was sure of it.

"Money."

His last target fell and she lined up her final shot. It flew in a dramatic arc before spiraling into the dirt.

"I'll believe that if you can say it again with a straight face."

She had him there.

"Alright, alright… A long line of bad decisions. It seemed like a good one, turned out it wasn't."

Jill reset the targets from the pile of expired tins and empty bottles he had gathered before her arrival. There were more targets than bullets remaining, and they would burn through them faster now they were both here.

"I'm guessing army too?" she said when she returned. The wind was picking up now and it whipped her short hair about her face. It was a look that suited her.

"Not by choice," he said.

She raised her eyebrows at this and he laughed.

"I'm Colombian," he explained. "National service. Twelve months of it – I was lucky."

Carlos did not like to dwell on this time too much. That had been the first mistake, hadn't it? Returning to Colombia, getting his _libreta militar_ and then pissing off to a jungle training camp and losing all contact with his family.

"That explains the Spanish," Jill said.

An uncomfortable chill passed through him.

"What?"

She looked up at him with those blue eyes of hers and smirked.

"You said something to me last night," she said. "Don't worry, I only know the dirty words and you didn't say any of them."

He observed her, watched her turn back to the targets and eye each one of them in turn. She settled for a bottle towards his side of the range and fired. The bullet caught the neck but it was enough to knock it off its perch.

"You know the dirty words in a lot of languages?" he teased. It still unsettled him, because he could vaguely remember thinking something, but was convinced the words had not been spoken aloud.

A sharp elbow jabbed his arm amicably.

"One of the S.T.A.R.S. Captains spoke Spanish," she explained, "and was a very malleable drunk."

There was a tinge of sadness to her words and her shoulders relaxed but a little. When she fired her next shot it impacted in the fence below her target – it wobbled but remained where it was.

Mikhail had told him a little about S.T.A.R.S. after Jill had left for the substation. He didn't know a lot but had done his research prior to their deployment. He knew they were highly skilled combatants, and that most of the team had been wiped out in some investigation gone wrong only a couple months earlier. Now that Carlos knew the truth he wished he had never asked.

"You don't have an accent," Jill pointed out. She had lowered her weapon now. "Did you live in Colombia your whole life?"

The chill returned. He knew where this conversation would lead them, but something urged him forward and what was he to do but follow?

"Most of it," he said. "My mother is technically American – she moved south before she had me – and we have a lot of family in both countries. I was raised dual lingual so I've spoken both languages my entire life."

He paused, lined up a shot and fired. Perfect shot.

They were in this together, right? And she had trusted him, hadn't she? She had spilled everything, had stripped her past bare and laid it all out in front of him. True, his didn't haunt him the way hers did, and he was as eager to leave it behind as she was to carry forward certain parts of hers. But it was part him, part of who he was. It was the reason Umbrella had recruited him.

There was no-one else in the world right now that he trusted quite like her. But would she trust him if she knew everything?

He owed it to her to at least give her the option.

"My father was murdered when I was 12," he said. Her weapon lowered, but he focused his attention on his own, ran his fingers along the cold metal. It didn't chase away the familiar grief but it helped a little. "A paramilitary attack. Wrong place, wrong time. Nobody did shit about it and we were just supposed to bury him and move on."

"Carlos, I'm so sorry."

He shrugged.

"It wasn't as uncommon as you'd think. But I got angry, and stupid. Started hanging around with some older kids, learned too much about communism for Ma's liking and next thing you know I'm living with her cousins in New York."

"New York isn't so bad," she said with a smile. He signaled agreement with one of his own.

"Still, Ma wouldn't leave Colombia. So when I graduated high school I went back for my _libreta militar_. Seemed like a good idea at the time… But I was still that angry kid, and I saw a lot of shit I didn't like. So when my mandatory service was over, I took off, reconnected with old friends…"

He wouldn't go into detail about what came next. If she was half as intelligent as he gave her credit for, she knew exactly where that path had taken him.

"Umbrella found me after most of my guys had been gunned down. I still don't know how I got out of there alive but they knew what had happened, and they wanted me on their side. Offered everything I'd ever wanted on a silver platter – a chance to actually do some good. Even if I'd had somewhere else to go I couldn't have turned that down."

For all that Umbrella had done, the UBCS _had_ done good in the end. They had saved hundreds of lives. In his short time among their ranks he had felt a sense of righteousness that hadn't been entirely delusional. So maybe he did owe something to them, even if he had been nothing but a pawn. It had brought him here, on vague speaking terms with his family again, in the company of someone with the tenacity to perhaps hold them accountable for what they had done.

He wanted Jill to put her gun down, to sigh and shake her head, perhaps even step away. But it wouldn't have been Jill if she had, would it?

"Thank you for trusting me," she said. Those blue eyes were still soft when they squinted up at him.

"Still think I'm a good person?"

She smiled.

"You've not proven otherwise yet," she said.

"Not going to arrest me?" There was a smirk with this question.

"Not a cop anymore. Besides, I owe you." And then she winked at him.

The tension the weight on his chest had left in its absence dissipated. Jill turned back to their targets and from the _ting_ that echoed around them he assumed that her next target was justly obliterated. But his attention was still on her, perhaps not trusting her response, perhaps a little turned on by the way her muscles flexed just a little as she squeezed the trigger. Maybe a little bit of both.

"I'll give you this victory," she said with a faint smile. "But…I guarantee I can outrun you. Once my hip is better, I mean."

"You have any idea who you're talking to?"

"Someone with no Delta Force training and an extra 60 pounds to drag around."

That made him laugh out loud. It wasn't the tone, wasn't the smirk, it was the absolute precision with which she opened fire on him.

"If only you could hit your targets like that, maybe I'd have been in trouble."

* * *

**October 4th 1998, 20:57.**

The aerial was a lost cause and after another day of trying to fix it Jill had just given up. At the very least they could pick up the news, and the radio worked just fine. But that didn't make for good entertainment and they both needed that now more than ever. So, Carlos had dug an old box of VHS tapes out of the apparently infinite attic and they had spent the better part of an hour rummaging through them trying to find something to watch. Most of what they found was older than she was.

Carlos had planned this all along. Jill knew because he just happened to have picked up popcorn with the groceries. He had also never made popcorn in his life – this she knew this because popcorn wasn't supposed to be so dark a shade of brown.

But this was nice. The movie was terrible, but they had beers and enough of the snacks were edible. And there always had been some sort of daft pleasure in tearing a movie apart, scene by scene, with someone who thought it equally as ridiculous.

And when she woke from an apparently dreamless snooze to find his arm around her, his shoulder her pillow, and him spark out beside her at an angle that almost made him her mattress too, she was okay with that also.

It was the pain in her hip that woke her. The bruise was now a ghastly shade of green and yellow, and while the pain had become less sharp it was no less frustrating. It would have been far more comfortable if she had unwound herself from Carlos and stretched out a little, but she found that she had a problem with the unwinding herself from Carlos part of that.

Because it wasn't a nightmare that had woken her, and she couldn't recall the last time that had happened.

He was all hard muscle and rough skin but there was something so inherently comforting about it. She was sure his hand hadn't rested so gently on her hip before she had passed out, but the warmth beneath his palm seemed to help soothe her pain just a little so she let it rest there a while longer.

There was so much tension in him even as he slept and she longed to sink her fingers into those muscles and work it out but she was far too shy to ask and not quite bold enough to just go ahead and do it. More than that, she wasn't so sure where her fingers would have stopped.

She was done with this recovery, with this pain, with this restlessness. It was compromising her, setting her off her guard.

And there it was again. That strange ache behind her ribcage. The one that had flourished as he laid his past bare, as he trusted her with the last piece of him he had kept locked away. Who would have thought he'd had such a colourful past? She didn't know a lot about the troubles south of the border but she had read bits and pieces and whatever she would have pictured a communist guerrilla to be like, it wasn't him. But it made sense, didn't it? He was a one-man army, willing to risk everything for those that needed it.

Carefully, she reached up to sweep his hair aside, uncovering closed eyes, and that ache in her chest flourished once again.

His hair was almost unfairly soft. Again, she imagined running her fingers through it the way she had in the shower that night.

Jill sighed as she leaned back into him. They had only been here a few days – was she really going that stir crazy?

Her wounds ached a little less now, and she wondered if it was time that she moved on. The quarantine seemed to be working – if she took it slow and worked her way to the border they may have eased back measures by the time she got there. And if not, how difficult would it be to find fake ID in a time like this?

She couldn't stay here, not forever. And the longer she did, the more she wanted to take him with her.

He stirred in his sleep, and his arm moved to her waist. The warmth he radiated weakened her resolve. When she eventually made her move, when she took that next step, there would be no normal for a long time. Maybe normal would never return. She knew what this fight would cost, what she was willing to give. Shouldn't she try to enjoy this while she could?

Carlos wore a polo shirt and the buttons at the top had come undone at some point in the day. From beneath the light fabric she saw dark hairs peeking through. How many times had she seen him shirtless now? She knew exactly what pattern that hair followed, knew exactly how tanned the skin beneath was. She knew where the hair broke to showcase the taut muscles of his abdomen, where it started again, and where it snaked down with the V of his hips. In her mind, she pictured the rest, saw where the line of his hips met that deliciously dark hair, imagined just what those muscular thighs felt like bare, imagined running her fingertips up the inside-

"Fuck…" she breathed. What was wrong with her?

It wasn't Raccoon that had sent control spiraling from her grasp. It was chaos, yes, but she was always calm under pressure. Hadn't her final S.T.A.R.S. evaluation praised her for this? And there had always been the plan, the one that would eventually lead her to Europe. The only unexpected factor was him.

Carlos, who had been so capable and so kind, who had saved her life again and again. Carlos, who had tended to her wounds, who had sat guard over her in the hospital and still watched out for her now. Carlos, who was a force to be reckoned with and one that fought for good. Carlos, who was the only factor of this isolation that was not soul-shatteringly shit. The only thing, and it was almost enough to break her much-lauded composure.

It wasn't that she wanted someone to fuck away her pain. She wanted _him_ , all of him, taking all of her. She didn't know why exactly; her brain and her heart was keeping that under lock and key but everything further south was urging her to just figure it out later.

In utter frustration, she sat up and rubbed her hands up her arms. Carlos stirred the moment she moved and when he saw her he snapped to attention and reached out.

"Hey," he said. "Everything ok?"

She wished he wouldn't look at her like that, like he would bring the world to a halt if that's what she needed. The concern was insulting, wasn't it? Like she lacked control, like she couldn't take care of herself.

"Yeah, just…fell asleep."

Just like that, his brow unfurrowed and his lips twisted into a wry smile.

Jill was unjustly frustrated. Hadn't she snapped at him in Raccoon when he had scolded her for turning herself into bait? Hadn't she yelled at him when he dared to consider her for a second when Nicholai was escaping with the vaccine? Hadn't she only just now become irritated at his concern?

So why now did she want him to question her, to pry a little deeper and persuade her into letting him hold her, just for a little while? Why did she want him to take control away from her?

"I'm not saying I don't trust you…but remember that 'together' thing?"

That wasn't fair.

"Tell me what you were dreaming of," she said.

"Nothing."

"That's bullshit."

"Hey!"

Carlos winced and she immediately regretted her words. But she didn't apologise. She was too riled up for that.

"I mean it," he said, and he seemed to hear this as he spoke and looked surprised enough that she believed him. "It's probably the first time I've closed my eyes since-"

Shit.

Something passed between them when his eyes snapped up again to meet hers. Something sharp, like a sudden jolt of static.

Jill had known they would find their way here eventually. Don't ask her how but she had known. That comfort, that security. Where that pool of shared strength suddenly became stable enough that they could begin to replenish their own.

She just hadn't expected it to come so soon. In fact, she had prepared to be long gone before it did. Because it was dependency and neither of them would be tethered long enough for it to be of any real benefit.

"It was you," he said. "That night. You were in my room, only it wasn't you. It was the you where I'd failed, where there was no vaccine and- I've spent every day worrying I didn't do it right. The hell does that mean, Jill? I don't think about the fact I could be infected. I don't think about Tyrell or Mikhail or any of the others. It's you, and you're right here proving those fears wrong every day."

The gap between them grew smaller. She wasn't sure which one of them had moved, but there was significantly less sofa there now.

It was her that moved next though, she knew that much. With an elbow against the back of the sofa she brought her fingers to his hair, just to the strands that would grow into his eyes over the next few weeks, and thought about how she'd like to stick around long enough to give it a trim.

It would have been easier if he had stopped her, but he didn't move, not even his eyes. She scanned every bruise on his face, the ones he had collected saving her life yet again on that rooftop. She thought back to the grief as she had laid eyes on his unmoving form, the pain as that gunshot echoed around them all and he had crashed to the ground. Where the default her mind snapped to was leaving the city with him or not at all.

She was going to kiss him. There was no stopping that. She didn't like this not knowing, didn't like this chaos. She needed to get a handle on it, needed to taste him just a little and then be on her way.

God, he moved so slowly, but when the back of his fingers stroked her cheek they were so warm and that jolt, that static, fizzed again and set every nerve alight.

_Thwack._

They both jumped, and she almost yanked out the hair that she caressed. Something had impacted against the window, not hard enough to shatter but hard enough to shake it.

Carlos was first on his feet, and he retrieved his gun from the coffee table before pressing his back against the wall next to the window, peeling back the curtains but a little and glancing over his shoulder into the darkness.

Jill watched him, a breath away from grabbing her own weapon, as his eyes moved, then his shoulders relaxed and he let out a little huff of laughter.

"Just a damn bird," he said.

There was no warmth anymore, no spark. Only cold. Only ice, the ruffle of feathers and a distant squawk only she could hear.

She saw Forest, at the last get-together they had all had; his long hair falling free over his shoulders, his eyes alight with joy, his tattoos on full display. Then she saw him as she had last laid eyes on him; hair matted with blood, sinewy strands hanging from where his right eye once was, tattooed skin torn, flesh pecked down to the bone.

"Hey!"

In her haze of memories she did not see Carlos move back to her, didn't react at all until she felt him pull her hand in his and squeeze.

"Where are you, Supercop?"

There it was. That name again. It was all it took to bring her back to the farmhouse, to his company and the tenderness of his touch.

After everything he'd seen, he could still call her that, still saw her as the focused soldier she had been on the streets of Raccoon.

That was why she needed him.

Her lips parted, words formed in her throat.

"Tell you what," he said. "I'll go check the perimeter. Just to be safe."

The words dissolved.

"No," she argued. It wasn't a question of who was the least likely to come out of this with more nightmare fuel – they were both damaged, both struggling.

"Let me do this," he asked. "Give me at least one chance to play the hero."

She could have argued. Part of her really wanted to, as she recalled a tally that counted overwhelmingly in his favour. But she was surprised to find that she liked this. He wasn't trying to protect her, wasn't insinuating that she was weak or incapable. He just wanted to offer some comfort and if that made him feel better too, she was all for it.

* * *

The perimeter was indeed secure. Carlos hadn't doubted it for a second but it had helped ease his mind to check. The darkness didn't bother him. It was different here. You could see the stars for one. They reminded him of Colombia, of days in the countryside, and of days past those in that very farmhouse with his family during summer vacation. The only stars in New York were on Broadway, and he couldn't recall ever thinking to look up in Raccoon. Even so, he found that his torch had swayed from the dirt path a time or two to be swallowed by the unplumbed depths of darkness that surrounded the farmhouse.

Jill was already in her bedroom when he returned and though he would have loved nothing more than to have picked up where they left off, he knew that moment was long gone.

She had felt it too, right? She had to. She was so close, and she looked at him like she knew exactly what was running though his mind, like she was reflecting it right back at him.

He was in trouble. This girl would be the end of him and he wasn't sure if he minded any more. So there he was, perched on the edge of his bed, smiling at something he was sure he'd be drinking over later.

There was a knock on his door before he could settle into bed and when he looked over his shoulder Jill was standing in his doorway, arms crossed in front of her in a somewhat nervous fashion.

She had changed her pyjamas since that awful night. Now, she wore one of the sets he had purchased on his trip into town two days earlier – a white tee with powder blue pants. She looked good, but he wouldn't tell her. It was hardly appropriate.

"Perimeter's clear," he told her. "Might've been a few heavily armed agents I had to fight off but I made quick work of them."

He had never known anyone able to roll their eyes in such an endearing way. The laugh that accompanied this action was more than his stupid joke deserved.

"Is this hero complex thing a permanent fixture?" she asked. She allowed her arms to fall by her side and he stood to face her as she slowly walked over to him.

"That would depend."

"On what?"

"Is it doing anything for you?"

She opened her mouth, then countered her own words with laughter. He couldn't help but notice that her eyes were fixed not on his, but in the middle of his chest. He noticed because he had already changed into his pyjama bottoms and he never wore a T-shirt to bed.

"You don't need a hero, Jill," he said. "You never did."

She smiled.

"And if you hadn't insisted on playing the part anyway, I wouldn't be here," she pointed out, finally looking up. There was gratitude he didn't ever expect her to be able to express shining through her eyes, and he wanted to argue it back. But what would he tell her? That saving her life had been a pleasure? That was too corny even for him.

There was something on the tip of her tongue – he saw her part her lips a time or two but she swallowed the words rather than speak them. Were they the same that he kept closely guarded? Were they words formed by what had almost happened, by what had passed between them?

"Can I stay here tonight?" she asked. Her words brought every hair on his arms to attention. Surely he hadn't heard her right? But when he looked at her for confirmation there was a flush to her cheeks and her mouth was twisted in a way that gave the impression she was about to take the question back.

"Sure," he said, before she could. And he almost kicked himself. How could he have said that so casually? 'Sure' was for agreeing to pass someone the salt, a beer, a napkin. Not for someone asking to share your bed.

Or was that not what she had meant?

She sighed, and then she relaxed. It struck him then that he wasn't quite sure what to do next. Usually when he shared a bed with a woman they were falling onto it, barely more than a tangle of limbs. So, he moved to the pile of discarded clothes on the chair in the corner, picked out the freshest crumpled T-shirt and pulled it over his head.

She had slipped between the sheets before he could turn off the light and even when he did moonlight still streamed into the room. It was enough to illuminate her there, the thin sheet atop her revealing exactly how her body curved beneath it.

There had been no nightmares when he had snoozed on the sofa. No dreams either but the absence of anything was a blessing. But why? They had been absolutely unrelenting, growing stranger and more chaotic, building towards a crescendo he did not quite want to witness. And then nothing. Not even a memory.

This played on his mind as he lay there on his back, staring up at the ceiling, trying to let the frustrations of the evening slip away.

There was movement beside him. Barely a shuffle. Then, warmth on his chest, right where her eyes had been not too long ago.

Carlos looked down and saw her long fingers flat against his wrinkled T-shirt. Heat blossomed from her touch, spread through his chest, down his abdomen, along the nerves of every limb.

God, she was beautiful. And she was looking through him, wide awake, shy almost. The hand against his chest was sincere, firm, intentional, but the far-off look in her eyes couldn't have been further from that. It was strange to see a woman so undeniably strong and in control doubting something so simple, like she had submitted to some baser instinct and wasn't quite sure yet if she regretted it.

And that was her thing, wasn't it? Control. She was on the civilians' side, her side, not _theirs_. She wasn't his partner, she was her own free agent. She lured Nemesis away because that was the only certainty she knew – that it wanted her, that their chances were better without her. The only time he had seen her even loosen her grip on anything was their first night, when she had cried out her fears and frustrations…and then immediately apologised, immediately clawed back what she could.

So, against his gentlemanly nature, he took some of that control away from her. He rolled, slowly, carefully, onto his side to face her. She couldn't look anywhere but into his eyes now. And he had been right: there was almost a plea hidden behind those blue irises, a frightened call for help. But he made no further move. Gave her the final choice. Gave her the middle to meet him in.

The blue eyes closed, and a sigh escaped into the darkness. Then, fingertips ghosted up the inside of his arm, working their way to his wrist, over his palm, and then settling between his own, her right hand slotted firmly into his. It was mere millimetres from his face; it would have been so easy to take another step, to press a tender kiss to her skin. But where would that end? Would he utter some unknown Spanish phrase to her again? Would he want more than she could give?

No, this was perfect. This was beautiful. This was enough.

So, he locked his fingers in hers, squeezed her hand, and then closed his eyes.


	4. No te vayas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he smiled at her she felt that she might crumble. She was never this honest about her flaws and her mistakes so it felt far from comfortable to admit them, but this was something else. He seemed to tower over her in that moment, and she felt as though she was for the first time becoming aware of how thick his torso was, and how each bicep could easily flex to the size of her thigh. It was a vulnerability that she didn't mind, enjoyed even. And it was something she wasn't sure she had ever felt for anyone before.
> 
> ~~
> 
> Sometimes the greatest battles we fight are the ones with ourselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a lot longer than I anticipated (dw, next will be shorter!)... and the ending went from what it was to something a lot tamer several times in my mind. But here it is and I hope you enjoy it :). Thanks again for the comments, kudos and all of your kind words - I love you all.

**October 5th 1998.**

The morning of October 5th revealed itself, as most did in the farmhouse, with beams of sunlight and gentle birdsong. Jill had woken clear-headed to the gentle beep of an alarm clock and the red LED flash of 9am. The bed she woke in was not hers but it was familiar, and the scent upon the sheets gave her comfort the likes of which she had been woefully unfamiliar with in recent weeks.

Her fingers were still entwined with Carlos' and when he woke to silence the alarm clock with a _thwack_ that made the bedside table shake he still held on to her.

There had been nightmares, she knew better than to expect there wouldn't be, but something was different about them. Maybe they hadn't been as lucid? Or maybe they hadn't shaken her so much, knowing that she would not wake to the jarring silence of reality alone.

There had been no words either and it was at least half past before they had moved. Breakfast had been no different than the three that had preceded it and for that she was grateful. She would look at him, and him at her, and sometimes their eyes would meet and a smile would betray one of them, but the conversation that flowed over cereal was as innocent and jokey as it had always been.

Even when she had climbed into the passenger seat of the old banger at their disposal, occasionally casting him a glance from behind a pair of old sunglasses she had found in the glove compartment, there was no awkwardness in their interaction. She had relented, had opened up, had let him in a little further…and the world hadn't ended.

The radio was patchy but the signal improved the closer to town they drove. Every now and then a song she recognised would play and she would notice Carlos's fingers tapping on the steering wheel. After a while he caught her looking and smiling and took that as his cue to begin singing along loudly. Soon after, she joined him.

The town was small, but it had everything they could possibly need. It wasn't Raccoon City or New York or Chicago, but it had a grocery store, a drug store, more clothing stores than they needed, and even a library.

The parking lot they pulled into was not empty but they were still able to find a spot isolated enough for comfort. Jill exited first and leaned against the passenger door as Carlos fumbled inside. When he emerged he moved over to her, cast a quick glance around the parking lot, then held out a hand with several notes folded between his fingers.

"What's this?" she asked as she took them from him.

"Buy yourself something nice," he said with a wink.

She counted out $240 and swore.

"Carlos, I can't take this!"

"Yes, you can."

"And you can't just wave this much money about!"

Carlos smirked and look at her from beneath his bangs.

"I have over twice that in my pocket," he said, like that was supposed to make her feel better. "And way more than that at the farmhouse. Umbrella money. Figure they owe us."

Jill was speechless.

"Do you always carry this much cash around?"

At this, he looked a little sheepish and shrugged.

"Just a habit."

She counted out the cash again, separated $50 and handed the rest back to him.

"Don't even think about it," he warned her. His hands were firmly in his pockets – there was no way of slipping it into them without going for a move that would have been wholly inappropriate for a public space. "I told you they paid well, and they paid per assignment – it was more like a mercenary contract than a salary. I wouldn't have completed it if it wasn't for you so the way I see it, it's your money too."

Grumbling, she pushed the rest of it into her pocket, resolving to spend as little as she needed and return the rest to him somehow.

"What do we need?" she asked, suddenly desperate to change the subject.

This time, it was a crumpled piece of paper that he pulled from his pockets.

"Not a lot. I can handle all this. The library's over there, if you want to do your thing I can meet you in say, an hour? If you can bear being away from me that long, of course."

In opening herself up to him, apparently she had also encouraged a side of him she had not seen much of since they had first met in Raccoon City.

"I'm sure I'll manage," she returned sardonically.

In a move that endeared her as much as it infuriated her, he reached up to ruffle her hair before starting to walk away.

"If you do want to pay me back, you could always buy something you can model for me later," he said over his shoulder.

She swore at him and was pretty sure her cheeks burned red but he was already laughing his way out.

Her gaze lingered on him a little longer than was necessary as he walked away. Today he was dressed in jeans, sneakers and a grey hoodie with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and she couldn't help but notice how casual suited him. He even appeared to have run some sort of product through his hair to tame some of its post-wash buoyancy and wore a couple leather bracelets on his right wrist. He looked like a completely different person – he looked years younger, far removed from the soldier she had met on the streets of Raccoon City.

Jill caught herself and shook her head. She didn't have time for this.

The library was nothing like she was used to in the city but it had books and it also had a computer with a working internet connection, which was exactly what she was looking for.

The survivors had all set up new email accounts after the mansion incident, paranoid as they had been. There had been nothing to suggest that Umbrella had started tracking her in that respect so she allowed herself a moment of carelessness and bought half an hour's worth of computer time.

While the library was small, it was mercifully big enough that she didn't attract a lot of attention hidden away in a corner, surrounded by books so pristine she doubted anyone had ever checked them out.

There were 6 emails waiting for her when she logged in. Two were from Rebecca, the rest were from Chris. All but one of them were dated after she had fled her apartment. The first few were pleas for a response during the early days of her escape, the next a series of increasingly frantic (and badly-typed) messages from her former partner sent as the T-virus was working its way through her system.

The last one was sent barely a day ago.

_J,_

_Rebecca got through – I'm glad you made it out of there. I was worried sick, but I never should have doubted you! We have a lot to talk about next time we meet. I have a place here, Rebecca said the plan is still on so I guess I'll be seeing you soon. Sounds silly but I missed you. Doesn't feel right being here and doing all this without you. You're a lot better at this that I am and I'm not just talking about the language. I need you here. So stay safe, yeah? Take whatever time you need to heal and get yourself here in one piece._

_C._

_P.S. Have you heard from Claire? It's killing me, not being able to speak to her. But it's for her own good, right? At least, that's what I keep telling myself._

Jill rubbed her eyes.

"Fuck's sake, Chris," she sighed. How many times had she told him to call his sister? She was a Redfield; the silent treatment didn't work on him and it sure as hell wouldn't work on her. Jill would have called her herself if it weren't for the can of worms that would open. One angry Redfield was bad enough, she didn't want two on her case.

 _For the love of everything holy, Chris, call her,_ she typed. _Fuck it, I know you're not going to listen to me – you haven't the past 300 times, why should now be any different?_

She paused. Deleted it all.

 _I miss you too,_ she typed this time, forcing herself to smile. _I'll be there soon. And no, I haven't heard from Claire, but that's what you wanted, isn't it? At least let her know you're ok – as far as she knows, you were in RC. Don't put her through that._

She hit send before she could type anything else. There was so much that she wanted to say to him but it wasn't really the time or place. What she really wanted was to hear his voice again, to know that he was safe and to confide in him the way she had back in July. He knew her better than she knew herself sometimes – he would know what her next move should be and would be right there by her side whatever it was. She needed her partner.

Logging out of her email, she navigated next to the news, opening several different sites on multiple browser windows. The computer did not like this, seemed to grind to a shuddering halt. But when the pages eventually loaded she was greeted with the same images she had become accustomed to through a shaky television signal and newspaper pages.

There was something incredibly haunting about the crater that had once been Raccoon City. Nothing had survived, not even the shape of what it used to be. In every image, Umbrella vans stood next to army trucks, lab coats mixing with tactical gear in a confusing collage.

 ** _Umbrella to the rescue!_** Read one headline. Jill sneered at this. Of course they would insert themselves into the relief effort.

"Just you wait," she growled. "We're coming for you."

The other articles described the growing understanding of the T-Virus and how swift efforts had ensured that 4 days after the annihilation of Raccoon City all known cases had now been dealt with and the outbreak finally seemed under control. If only it were so easy to assuage her fears.

Other news sources had begun to ask questions. Where did the virus come from? Was this a terrorist attack? Why had the government waited so long to step in? She even stumbled across a sensationalist site that had dug up old Raccoon Times articles on the mansion incident. Funny how that seemed to be the only source that seemed anywhere close to the truth.

 _'With all surviving S.T.A.R.S. members likely silenced within the city limits, will the truth ever come to light?_ ' this particular article asked.

"Good question," she muttered.

An alert popped up in the corner of the screen reminding her that she had five minutes remaining.

Jill looked up, saw that she was still alone, and sighed.

She loaded up the search engine again, typed 'Ohio border' and waited for the results to load. Two minutes remaining.

**_Ohio borders to reopen by end of week._ **

**_Freedom at last! As quarantine eases, Ohio border checkpoints are expected to close by Friday._ **

**_Free movement across Ohio borders expected to return by end of week – Raccoon Quarantine Zone to remain in place._ **

Before she could click on any of the articles the window closed and an alert appeared, signalling the end of her session.

Four more days. An end was in sight.

Why was she shaking?

She felt phantom warmth against her palm, recalled the gentle pressure of Carlos's fingers entwined in hers. She heard his voice too, singing along to some old rock song on the radio, saw his hair tousled by the breeze from the open window.

She wasn't ready for this.

To balance her unease, she focused on the shattered vaccine vial she kept in her bedside table, remembered the coldness in Nicholai's eyes as he had destroyed it, the anger that had raged through her…

Why didn't that help? It sure as hell used to.

Jill scowled as she left the computer behind.

Time was on her mind as she worked her way through the clothing stores, picking up a piece or two in each one. She even stretched the money to a fresh set of lingerie a little more attractive than the basics she was working with. Small steps, she decided. Small steps back to feeling normal, and she would be reunited with what remained of her own possessions soon enough. But still, that sinking feeling lingered.

There was a coffee shop off the main square, with a good line of sight to their car, and it was here that she set up to wait for Carlos with a bottle of water and small fruit pot. He was punctual in a way she had only ever known military men to be, but he saw her in the window before she had a chance to gather her things and next thing she knew he was sliding his own bags under the table too.

"I have you as an espresso person," he said before she could even greet him. "But I know better than to assume a lady's coffee order, so what are you having?"

He wasn't wrong, and she raised an eyebrow to show this.

"Do we have time for coffee?"

"We always have time for coffee."

"Americano then. Please. Thank you."

* * *

"You look like you've been through the wars," the cashier said as Carlos handed over a crumpled ten dollar bill. Her voice was not devoid of sympathy.

"What can I say?" he said with a smile he knew always won the older ladies over. Then, he cast a lingering glance over at Jill. "Guess I like playing the hero."

At this the cashier smiled back at him in a proud, motherly fashion, looked over to the barista preparing his drinks and then surreptitiously slid the last remaining slice of coffee cake onto the tray before him with a wink.

Jill questioned this addition to their order when he returned to their table.

"Dunno," he said with a shrug. "People tend to just like me."

She didn't quite narrow her eyes at him, but she went halfway there, enough to make him choke on his first sip of coffee.

"Are you saying I didn't completely sweep you off your feet when we first met?"

"I was already swept off my feet," Jill pointed out. "You put me firmly back on them."

He pretended to be wounded, she pretended not to find it funny, and then they both fought back a treacherous smile.

She had relaxed a lot in the last few days, and so had he. Today, she seemed like a completely different person. She had even abandoned her usual morning routine of digging through her pile of notes, reading through them with a scowl, and then packing them away again without a single word to him.

The Jill of three days ago would not have consented to a coffee, would have wanted to check her emails, contact her friends and then get out of there. But here was the Jill of today, closing her eyes and savouring the taste of a pretty damn good blend.

He especially liked this Jill. He liked the way that she would blow gently on her coffee before taking a sip, the way her short hair would tumble from behind her ear if she leaned too far forward, the way she wore her loose T-shirt, the way her smile seemed less like a mask and managed to warm him in a way the coffee did not.

"Was there anything from Chris?" he asked, reigning in his wandering thoughts.

That was the whole purpose for her trip into town – to check her emails, the only way she had of contacting her former partner. Yes, he knew about Chris, and Rebecca, and Barry, but his knowledge only extended so far as their names and a few other bits and pieces he had deduced. She hadn't opened up about much more than that and it wasn't his place to pry.

"Yeah, he's ok," she said. "Well, he's alive. Ok will remain to be seen."

There was a vague annoyance hidden in her words but he chose not to question it and instead picked up a fork and nudged the other towards her.

Tension hung between them, and it seemed to radiate from both sides. He knew from where his own stemmed, but hers worried him. She was worried about her friends, he knew that, and maybe some of that worry extended to what awaited them all. Umbrella had taken the outbreak as an opportunity, and they had shown their true colours through their actions, not least those towards Bard and the other researchers. They were willing to kill their own to keep their secrets buried. Their enemies…

The Nemesis had frightened him and he had only watched from afar. No matter how many times she knocked it on its ass it just kept coming. He had seen the reports in the lab, he knew it was some damn prototype they decided to test on her and her colleagues. Umbrella's respect and consideration for its own, it seemed, limited itself to a quick death. What awaited Jill and her friends if they were captured would be far worse.

He picked at the cake, then cut off a small chunk and shoveled it into his mouth. It was light and fluffy. It was the best damn thing he'd tasted in some time.

When he looked up from the cake, after another mouthful, and then looked around the café and up at Jill, she was observing him curiously with that odd look still in her eyes.

For a moment he thought she would question him, but that moment passed and she helped herself to a far daintier serving of cake, leaning forward so they now both looked like scavengers circling a delicacy. But when she went in for the kill it was to take yet another small bite and then place her fork on the plate.

"The borders are re-opening," she said. She looked up at him as she spoke but she had to force herself to. A war waged inside her and though it appeared that she had won he still felt like collateral damage.

"Friday," he confirmed.

He had seen it too, through a news report on a tiny television screen behind the counter at the hardware store. Somewhere between there and the coffee shop he had decided to tell her when they were back at the farmhouse, but hadn't been entirely convinced that the words would be so forthcoming.

Neither of them spoke for a few long minutes. It was comforting, in a way, that she struggled to find words in the same manner as he. There was never any doubt what this meant, but it was some comfort to know that she wasn't eager to just cut and run.

They had both known that this was coming, but he had hoped in that selfish corner of his heart that it would be weeks away. Now, the clock had begun to tick. Four days until midnight.

"What's your next move?" he asked, picking at another piece of cake. Jill had yet to pick her fork up again.

"I have a place out of state," she said. That, he had already known. "Then, Europe."

She picked her fork up now, stabbed at the cake but didn't actually cut herself a piece.

"How about you?" she asked. "You figured it out yet?"

He didn't have an answer. Was no closer now than he had been four days ago. But he had an idea of where to start.

"We need to talk," he said. There was probably a better way to say it than that but he feared that if he kept it in any longer he might just talk himself out of asking what he needed to. "About…" he glanced around "…the company. I want to know everything. Right from the beginning."

Jill frowned – if he hadn't known better he would have thought he sensed disappointment. Fear – he definitely sensed that.

He had thought about this a lot. It was that familiar place again, the one where he was thirteen and his mom was crying at him, telling him his friends were no good, that he shouldn't listen to them. But this was different. This wasn't warfare, wasn't hoping for a better world. It was holding evil to account. It was clinical justice.

And maybe he didn't make it out of this. Maybe he was killed, or maybe Umbrella caught up with him and he ended up in a test tube. Death didn't scare him. The latter did, but he would make peace with that. What did he have to lose, anyway? There was nobody to miss him that hadn't already said their goodbyes.

"Carlos, are you sure?"

"I was never going to just walk away from this," he said. "That's not me. I'll stay here, I'll look into their US operations."

"This is dangerous."

"I know. But I'm good at keeping my head down. You know what I was."

There was that look again. The one where she fought back against something, where she would look up and then to the side with tight lips. True to form, she followed that pattern.

"I know what this could cost," he told her. "And if that's what it takes to bring them to justice, I'll gladly pay that."

A sigh. A smile. She wasn't happy about this, but whatever that war inside her was, it left her without the strength to argue.

"I know you would."

* * *

**October 5th 1998. 19:00.**

Jill needed time alone. Who would have thought digging through your past could be so grueling? She laughed at this thought. It wasn't really her past, was it? It was two months, that was all. Two defining months that had slowly become her entire life.

Carlos had listened intently, had even made notes of her suggestions for leads to follow up on. Then, when she was done and she felt raw and exposed and entirely uncomfortable, he asked if she needed to be alone and left without hesitation when she said yes.

It wasn't just the dredging of her past. It was the realisation of what she was sending him in to, alone.

_"We need to talk."_

_Her eyes snapped up, but he was looking intently into the cake._

_'Say it,' she pleaded silently. 'Say it. Ask it. Ask to come with me. I'll say yes. I'll say yes and we can plan together.'_

Jill was sure something broke inside of her when he asked about Umbrella. It made sense that he would want to go after them and she had known he would all along. It wouldn't have been Carlos if he had not.

But she would be sending him into the unknown, and if something happened to him…she would never forgive herself.

It was her damn pride that stopped her from asking him to join her, and now that he had made his own plans it was easier for that stubborn part of her to decide that it never would.

She carried these thoughts into her phone call with Rebecca, but had so far refrained from voicing them.

"We will set off first thing tomorrow," Rebecca promised her. "We really don't mind picking you up when the borders open?"

"It's ok," Jill assured her. "Carlos managed to fix the car so he's going to drive me at least to the nearest train station."

"Jill, you can't take the train. You don't have any money for one."

"Yeah, that's what he said," she laughed. "So looks like he's driving me all the way."

"It's the first time you've said his name," Rebecca pointed out. "You sure he's not coming with you?"

She had already explained the plan – that Carlos would remain in the US and follow up any leads they had there. In return, Rebecca had pointed out that the leads they did have could easily be followed up in Europe and most of them had led there anyway.

"It's for the best," Jill said.

"You're a worse liar than Chris, you know that?"

She frowned, but could not argue the comparison. And where was Chris now? In Europe while his sister probably worried herself sick watching the news. She knew Claire, knew she wouldn't just sit around and do nothing – she wouldn't accept Chris for dead unless she had a body to bury.

But which side had she been on there? She had pushed for Chris to talk to his sister, to maybe not tell her the truth but to reassure her so that she would stay out of trouble. For all the good it had done in the end. Is that what she was doing to Carlos? Was she feeding him information and leaving him to his own devices to save the hurt she would feel if something happened to him because of her? What if leaving him behind was as good as pulling the trigger herself?

"Rebecca, he's a good guy," she said. "A real good one. He doesn't deserve to be brought into this shit."

"Did any of us?"

Jill paused to consider this. She was right, they both knew that. The family room door was closed but she could hear the distant clank of pots and pans in the kitchen and though she couldn't hear the radio she could hear Carlos singing along to it.

"I like him," she said without thought. Saying it out loud didn't quite have the effect she had hoped – rather than relief, she just felt that horrible ache again. "More than is sensible for me to like anyone right now."

There was a soft sigh on the other end of the line.

"Jill," Rebecca said, her voice softer than she had ever recalled hearing it. "I understand, I really do. This doesn't feel like the right time for anything normal. But maybe that's why we need it now more than ever. Running away won't make you feel any better. And Barry was right; we need all the help we can get. Don't let your feelings get in the way of that."

Jill laughed. Was she being scolded by a nineteen-year-old or being given lessons in emotional well-being from one? Probably both.

"There is so much at stake, Rebecca."

"I know. But pushing him away isn't going to make you any more focused. Could even be the opposite. And hey…do you think the guys would have wanted this? You think they would be glad for us to deny ourselves happiness in the pursuit of vengeance?"

There it was. Vengeance. Because that's what this was when it came down to it. Justice, yes, but justice fueled by an all-consuming need to avenge their fallen brothers. And Rebecca was right. She pictured them again: Forest, Joseph, Richard, Brad, Ken, all of them. They had cared about her just as much as she cared about them. They would have wanted justice, but not if it cost the survivors everything.

"I'll think about it," she promised.

"Good. Now, it's going to take us a while to get to the summerhouse if we're swinging by the apartment but we should be there before you. You leaving first thing Friday?"

"That's the plan."

"Ok, then it's set. We can't wait to see you again. And to meet this guy, he must be something special to have you in so much of a spin."

Jill swore to show exactly what she thought of this and Rebecca laughed.

"Rebecca, can I ask you one thing before you go?"

"Sure"

Jill wasn't sure quite why the thought crossed her mind, but the timing was impeccable.

"You know a little Spanish, don't you?"

Rebecca breathed deeply.

"Oh my. Uh…yes. I mean, I took some classes but I'm not an expert."

That was more training than a lot of people had in any language but Jill didn't point this out.

"What does 'no te vayas' mean?"

There was a momentary pause as the younger girl considered this.

"Uh, it means 'don't go'. Like 'don't leave'." There was another pause. "Oh…"

Jill thought a tear had escaped when she had allowed herself to recall the faces of her lost friends, but she had not reached up to check. Now though, without any of the accompanying grief, she most definitely felt one slide down her cheek and angrily pawed it away.

"Jill…"

"It was nice to speak to you again," Jill said. "I'll call you at the summerhouse when we're close."

A quick goodbye was exchanged but Jill was under no illusion that she had not just hung up on her friend.

_The stench of cigarette smoke was almost overpowering. Was he smoking himself into an early grave?_

_"I'm heading to Europe," Chris told her. "Irons is days away from suspending me and this is too good a lead to pass up."_

_She looked at the papers in his hands, words caught in her throat._

_'No,' she pleaded in her mind. 'Don't go. Or take me with you. Please. You're my partner, I can't do any of this without you.'_

_All she could manage in the end was a nod._

She was back in RC and her grief felt more raw. She was hugging Chris at the airport, not knowing when (or even if) she would see him again, those words still caught, still secret. It was a few weeks later and Barry was slamming shut the trunk of his car and she was hugging him now, and Rebecca in turn; there was room for her and the rest of her things, he was saying, but she was biting her tongue and assuring him she would be fine, that this is what she wanted.

Her cheeks were wet and she was back in the farmhouse, back in Carlos's room, watching him teeter on the edge of his bed in the rum and sleeping pill daze he had brewed. Only this time when he spoke, he spoke in English, asked her not to leave him..

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she swore. The tears slowly stopped falling and she rubbed her cheeks dry but she still felt the sting in her eyes.

Cool, calm and collected on the battlefield but a mess in private. She laughed at this, only because if she didn't she would start crying again. History was repeating itself, as it always did.

But she had control over this. She knew that. This was an opportunity, one to learn from her past mistakes. He wanted to fight, wanted to help, and she had no place to decide what capacity that would be in. Too long she had been thinking of him as an acquaintance or as a friend when she should have been thinking of him as what he had been – a partner.

The singing had stopped and when she found him in the kitchen he was closing a cupboard, the last of the clean utensils having been returned to their rightful place within. The radio was off too and she wondered if he had just been singing along to himself all this time. The hoodie he had worn into town had been discarded but he still retained that carefree look, like he had been enviably successful in shedding all that Raccoon City had flung at him. She could have argued that she looked the same after changing into her new clothes and new underwear upon their return. But he was the breath of fresh air, not her new shorts and certainly not the lacy thing she wore beneath them.

"All sorted?" he asked. If he noticed she had been crying only a few minutes earlier he did a good job of hiding it. But she suspected that he did because he abandoned his position and moved closer to her with that soft expression he so often wore when she was sure he could see right through her.

"Yeah," she said. "Look, I need to say something and you need to shut up and listen otherwise I'm not going to get it out…"

She paused, gave him time to interject, to talk her out of this. He cocked his head curiously to one side but respected her wishes. If he wasn't such a gentleman despite his ceaseless flirting she may not have found herself in this position, she realised in mild frustration.

"Come with me." There, it was out; clear, unmistakable. "Pack your things, come with me to Europe, and let's make those bastard's pay. For Tyrell, for Mikhail, for everything."

For a moment she wondered if he had heard her. Because he stood there looking at her like she'd just started speaking in French.

"Jill…" he breathed. She could see that he fought back a smile, and guilt overcame her. Was this what she had brought him to? Doubting that she would ever ask such a thing? "Are you sure? Is…is this what you really want?"

There was so much in his words that she could address and not all of it made her feel good.

"Yes," she said. She felt a familiar sting in the corners of her eyes and she pushed through it, knowing what she owed him. "Look, I don't trust easily, you know that. And somewhere along the line I got used to keeping to myself and working alone. I let my personal shortcomings interfere with what's best for the investigation and that's on me. But we need you. And you and I…we've been through so much together, it doesn't feel right to go our separate ways now, not when…well, when we both want the same thing."

When he smiled at her she felt that she might crumble. She was never this honest about her flaws and her mistakes so it felt far from comfortable to admit them, but this was something else. He seemed to tower over her in that moment, and she felt as though she was for the first time becoming aware of how thick his torso was, and how each bicep could easily flex to the size of her thigh. It was a vulnerability that she didn't mind, enjoyed even. And it was something she wasn't sure she had ever felt for anyone before.

Carlos studied her for a moment, and she felt as though she were under a spotlight, everything laid bare.

"There's nothing I'd like more," he said at last. And that was it. It was sealed, a done deal.

So why did she feel like there was more? Why did that weight still sit upon her chest? She had asked him, had cleared the air, had finally done what she had wanted to since day one.

He was still looking at her, and had somehow moved closer without either really noticing. He was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body, could even smell the lingering scent of his shower gel and whatever product he had pulled through his hair that morning. Beyond that, she smelled _him_ ; a scent completely indescribable but warm, earthy and comforting. It was the smell that lingered on his sheets and had welcomed her when she had woken in his bed. It was the scent she had inhaled when she had woken on his shoulder before that, and when he had stepped a little too close in the parking lot.

She wanted to pull him close, to burrow her head into the crook of his neck and just lose herself in him and all the comfort his presence gave. She even considered it. How much effort would it have taken to slide her arms around him and pull him close? She could even pass it off as a 'thank you' for joining her on this crusade.

But before she could he raised a hand and gently stroked the back of his fingers against her cheek. God, he looked at her with such reverence she felt wholly unworthy. He could have asked anything of her in that moment and she would have folded. But Carlos was a gentleman, she had learned that much about him, and he would never ask for anything she would not be comfortable giving.

So when he did speak, when his soft growl of a voice beseeched her, maybe he knew all along what her answer would be.

"Can I kiss you?"

She had never been asked before. This was new.

"You better."

He did not grab her the way she had been grabbed in the past, the way she had expected. She even wondered for a moment if he meant to follow through, but when his lips brushed ever so softly across hers she felt that weight, that horrible crushing pressure, melt in the heat that raged through her. Such a tender, soft kiss. Such a disproportionately nuclear response. When he felt her relax and parted his lips just enough to properly capture hers, she felt as though she may just pass out.

It wasn't just a kiss; it was a cleansing, a complete immolation of the weak, wretched creature she feared she had become. And beneath it all, she realised just how badly she needed him, not as a partner, not as a quick grief-laden fuck, but as someone she had truly grown to care about.

The fire in her chest dropped, and by the time it reached a certain part of her it was a veritable inferno. So much for a cold relief, so much for an itch scratched. But she didn't want relief, not any more, not when this affliction felt so damn _good_.

It was sensory overload, every nerve responding at a rate too fast for her brain to process. In many ways she was discovering him for the first time, learning just who Carlos Oliveira was, and what she meant to him. There was the gentleness in his touch, even as his fingers clenched in her hair and pulled her desperately towards him; the hunger as he fought with the part of him that just wanted to fuck her senseless; the respect in the hand that drifted up her waist, along her back, caressed the smooth skin on her stomach, but never dared explore anything higher; the affection when he would slow the kiss to an almost aching pace and his hands would both find her hair or her cheeks and she would feel thoroughly _loved_ in a way that was utterly alien to her.

Their lips parted as they both gasped for air, but she still felt his breath hot against her skin as he kissed down the edge of her jaw and onto her neck. She was overwhelmed, almost tearing up in sheer bliss. She wasn't even sure she had moved in some time.

"Carlos..." she gasped. She needed to taste his name, needed to roll it round on her tongue like it tasted as sweet as he did.

At the sound of it, he pulled back, panting, breathless, his cheeks flushed red and his eyes wild and drunk. She searched them for a moment, whimpering a little in protest, unsure of why he had stopped.

"Don't get all chivalrous on me now," she whispered when realisation dawned upon her. Eagerly, her fingers slid beneath his shirt, finding the hot skin there, the hard muscles, and the coarse hair she had only ever admired from afar.

He kissed her again, gently, briefly, almost taunting her with the smirk that accompanied it.

"I'm just trying to figure out if I'm dreaming or not," he said.

Emboldened by his statement, Jill traced her fingertips down that delicious trail of hair, over his belt buckle, down onto the denim below and squeezed gently on what she found there. She knew exactly what she wanted now, what she needed, and if either of them backed down now she might not have the courage to ask for it again. Fuck seeming needy.

"Does this feel like a dream?"

"Yeah, actually," he grunted, his grip on her waist tightening. "It does. _Fuck_ , you're one of a kind, you know that?"

His words were like honey and she would have thrown them back at him if her senses were in the right place. But she could feel him hardening beneath her touch and that was all she needed to know right now.

"Talk to me," he whispered as his lips found her neck again and carved another scorching path up her throat, pausing to nibble at just the right damn spot. "Tell me what you want. I want to hear you say it."

She was offering herself and he wanted words? She squirmed in protest and he knew he had her. Another wall to chip down, another gun to pry her fingers from. But it wasn't just her – he needed this, needed to convince himself that this really wasn't a dream, that he wasn't taking advantage of her in a moment of weakness. He had to be sure.

"You can't just kiss a girl like that and not follow through," she whispered into his ear before taking the lobe between her teeth. "Wouldn't be gentlemanly of you."

He laughed, and she felt it through his entire body.

"Jill, I don't think you want me to be a gentleman right now."

The lust in his eyes could have overwhelmed her. But there was more to it than that, and while that should have frightened her she found it difficult to be afraid of anything when he held her like this.

And Carlos? He couldn't believe she was here, teasing him, practically begging him to take her right there on the kitchen counter, and he was asking her for more. Her nails clawed down his chest now, above the fabric of his T-shirt, and it took everything in him to not give in. Perhaps she noticed this. Because she pressed that hand to his chest as she leaned forward, pressing her hips into his in a way that sent Spanish curses tumbling through his head.

"I told you," she said, looking into his eyes this time. "I want _you_. So take me upstairs and fuck me, Carlos."

Cold air rushed between them when he peeled himself away from her. She could feel his own frustration – days of want that neither of them had been willing to admit to, come to an explosive crescendo.

He did not carry her – he had far too much respect for her for that. But their journey upstairs was a fumbling, grasping one. One where she would walk a little too slowly and he would catch her from behind, pull her roughly into him and greedily run his hands over every part of her he could reach. One where she would turn and push him against the wall, kiss him hard enough for him to feel it in his bones, and grab possessively at the bulge in his jeans.

Their entrance to the bedroom came with the shedding of clothes – his T-shirt by the door, hers on the bureau, his belt somewhere he wouldn't find it for two days. She kept herself close to him, relishing his heat and the feel of his coarse chest hair against her soft skin.

Now, Jill was no stranger to sex. She'd had her fair share of men and enjoyed most of them. And she had heard all the promises before; how much they loved her, the things they would do for her, how they would never leave her. Carlos promised none of this. The only sounds that escaped him were the kind she echoed back. It was refreshing. It was…respect. That was new to her. And that other thing, the thing she couldn't quite put her finger on… She felt it every time his hunger abated, just for a moment, and he would just hold her, kiss her gently, as though he were savouring every second with her and not just the feel of her body against his. It was there in his eyes every time he searched hers, looking for any sort of sign that he should stop, that her consent was anything less than enthusiastic. It wasn't love. It was too soon for love. But she knew, given time, that it could be. Would be. If she let it.

An impressed laugh escaped her when he deftly unclasped her bra with one hand. It fell to the ground between them but she pressed her chest hard into his before he could indulge in his prize. He groaned and grumbled in complaint, but she felt the way his hips pressed that little harder into hers and she was enjoying the feel of him too much to care. He knew what he had to do if he wanted to see her, and he would have to let go of the gentleman in him to do that. That Carlos was for the morning, when they were bruised and sore but still had more to give and more to take.

Without even tearing his lips from hers, he lifted her up, balanced her on his hips, and they both tumbled onto the bed.

A breathy " _fuck_ " sounded above her, and she looked up to see him drag his eyes over every inch of her exposed flesh, drinking it all in at last. He didn't even try to touch her, didn't go for a messy grope. No, he marveled at her, like she was some work of art he felt hilariously unqualified to handle.

"I am going to kiss every inch of you." A fevered promise. "Every inch, Jill."

She wasn't an insecure person but there was a moment when that is exactly what she became. She was in good shape, was always sure to keep herself that way, but it had been months since she had been with a man and so much had happened since then. Her body had been bruised and broken long before Nemesis had got to her. There were still scars from the mansion, and her skin was pale enough that none of the bruises from the city had completely vanished. But when Carlos finally composed himself, when he made good on his promise, he kissed them too, tenderly, adoring them as much as he did the rest of her.

Her shorts were next to go, but it took his shaking hands a couple tries to loosen the buttons.

"Jill…" he laughed appreciatively as they were flung across the room. A hand glided up her thigh and over the blue lace panties he had uncovered, and she could have sworn he growled, actually _growled_. "I was joking when I said you should model for me, you know."

"In that case, you should probably get rid of them," she suggested.

His head moved lower this time, utterly fixated on her recent purchase.

"Oh, don't worry," he promised, looking up at her from between her thighs. "I'm getting there."

The fingertips that glided beneath the waistband of her panties made no effort to remove them. Instead, he traced the line of her hip beneath the fabric, moaning when her hips jerked in response to this.

"Fuck's sake," she gasped, biting the side of her hand. His fingers were somewhere else entirely now, teasing her beneath the lace. Her back arched but he pressed down on her hips, kept them pinned to the mattress.

Slowly, torturously so, he peeled back the fabric, and he made sure that his nails caught her flesh as he slid the lace down her thighs, over her knees and past her ankles. He caught her ankles before she could bring them back down, and the kiss he placed against the bone on the inside of her right sent sparks all the way up her leg to the part of her that ached for him the most. Jill moaned again, part in protest, part in encouragement. His beard was rough against her skin as he kissed up her leg, alternating pecks with licks and the occasional teasing nibble. Against her thighs it felt unbearably good, and the part of her that just wanted him to fuck her, no foreplay, no messing about, was very swiftly silenced.

When he finally arrived at his destination, when his breath was hot against her and his soft curls caressed the inside of her thigh, she let out a wanting mewl that left her feeling utterly ashamed.

Seconds later, the silence she had sworn herself to was broken. They were isolated, nobody for miles around. But she had always been conscious of how vocal she could be, and yet here she was, crying out in sheer ecstasy as he took her into his mouth. Long fingers tangled in his hair, gripping tight enough that she felt him grunt against her. But he didn't stop. He was a quick learner, explorative licks and tentative pressure becoming more focused with every sound he tore from her. She was consumed by greed, wanting more of him, but when her hips grinded against him he moved one arm to pin them down again, and slowed his pace so much a babble of incoherent words tumbled from her lips. He lavished painstaking attention on one particular spot now, one that had her almost hysterically sobbing his name.

She was close, so close.

"Carlos, I-"

Wrong move. With one last gentle suck on her clit he left her hanging, kissed his way up onto her stomach and laughed, fucking _laughed_ , when she swore at him, the pressure between her thighs now almost painful.

"Stay there," he whispered when his lips reached her ear. She would have sworn at him again if she was capable of words, but her brain was so much of a mess she wasn't even sure she would be able to recall her own name on cue. And when he left her there, a sweaty frustrated mess, she would have cursed his name to the heavens if she could only find the words.

He was only gone for a moment, and when he returned he was ripping the plastic from a small pack of condoms, pulling two foil wrappers from the box and flipping them over to check the date.

When he looked up at her he paused, breathless. In the short time he had been gone had he forgotten just what she looked like? No, she was etched into his mind for good; every curve, ever scar. But seeing her there, naked on his bed, exposed, looking up at him so expectantly; he couldn't even have dreamed this moment.

He was beautiful from this angle too, she realised – bronze skin glistening with sweat, thick muscular torso peppered with the bruises and wounds he had gained saving her life. There were more scars too, two in particular she recognised as bullet wounds, and she long to trace them, to kiss them as he had kissed her own wounds and learn their story. She could have spent forever gazing upon him. In fact, when she rose to her knees, when she reached out to him, unbuttoned his jeans, ran her hands over the bulge in his boxers and uncovered what lay beneath, she admitted that he may have been the most beautiful damn thing she'd ever seen.

She stroked him for a moment, rubbed her thumb from base to tip and back down again, delighting in the sounds this elicited. But when she moved, when her lips parted and kissed the skin below his navel his fingers found her hair again, gripped tight, stopped her in her tracks.

"Jill…" he gasped. "I'mma be honest: If you do that, this is going to be over quick."

It was his turn to move now, and he caught her lips with his before she could respond, her fingers slipping from the soft, wet skin of his cock. She groaned a little in disappointment but his knees were on the bed now and he crawled over her, urging her back until her head was level with the pillows. She couldn't complain - there would be time to taste him later. They had all the time in the world now.

There was more fumbling, the tear of a foil packet, a momentary pause, and then his lips were on hers again, hands greedily gliding over her from navel to neck. The blind feeling of his thighs between hers was heaven, and when he kissed her she felt his hand between them too, felt him guide himself to her entrance.

"Say it again," he whispered. There was an aching need in his voice that urged her to draw him into her arms, to kiss him the way he had kissed her, to make him feel better than he had ever felt in his life. He deserved it, this magnificent man. He deserved everything she could give and then some.

"I want you," she whispered back to him, no hesitation this time. His lips were at her neck now, his stomach touching hers. "I _need_ you. Now, through all of this. Just you. No-one else."

She wasn't sure if she was admitting it to him, or to herself, but it felt like gospel, like it was the only thing that made sense in this fucked up world.

"Si, amorcita," he whispered, and the fire within her flared, awakening something new. No, she wouldn't ask him to whisper to her in Spanish. She'd never hear the end of it if she did. He would ruin her with words and look what he could do with just one look. "You're all I need… The only damn thing."

He entered her slowly, and she felt his breath hitch, felt something inside her break. There was a lot of him and it took her a moment to adjust but he was careful, kissed her tenderly as he eased himself in, inch by inch, and she was so wet that none of it really mattered in the end. When he finally bottomed out he caught himself with a series of deep breaths and pressed his forehead to hers. For a long moment they just lay there, enveloped in their combined heat, joined intimately. She kissed him deeply, hoping in some way to convey the things she would never be able to put words to. When he finally began to move, she wrapped her legs around him, pulled him in as close as she could, and lost herself to the sense-shattering feel of him inside of her.

It was blissful, indescribable… She felt better than any dream could have conjured. Carlos had known he wouldn't last with her lips around him but this felt no different. He'd never had an issue with stamina, had never left a lady unsatisfied, but he wasn't so sure of anything any more. She had flipped the reset switch, scrambled his brain, changed the game. He wanted to just go wild, unleash everything, pin her arms above her head and fuck her senseless until she was screaming his name and he was moaning hers. Nails dug into his back, teeth left their mark on his shoulder. Fuck, he'd never pinned her for any of those things but it was working for him. He had to slow his pace, even if only for a moment, to regain his composure lest he come completely undone. When he did, something flared in her eyes – not quite anger, but certainly frustration. He adored it. There was something about strong women that always did it for him but she was something else entirely. She was bruised, scarred, angry, and in this moment she was all his. Every inch. Every scar. Every 'fuck you' he knew she wanted to utter to him.

He told her how beautiful she was, how good she felt, caressed as much of her as she would let him touch. She revelled in his words, believed every single one of them. She felt beautiful with the way he looked at her. She wanted to flip him over, to claw back control, to watch him squirm beneath her. Because he was just so damn beautiful she couldn't help herself - all that muscle, between her thighs, under her control. She almost came from the thought alone. But all she could manage was "harder", and he obeyed enthusiastically.

"You call that harder?" she goaded a moment later, a devilish smile on her lips. Carlos cocked his head to the side. An amused warning: be careful what you wish for.

He sat up, pulled her further onto his hips, and thrust so deeply the entire bed rocked with them and the most delicious of cries left her throat. But that wasn't enough. No. She wanted more? Yeah, he'd give her that…

"Si, _amorcita_ ," he purred and she groaned, rocked her hips in a movement that brought forth a united cry from them both. He knew. He fucking _knew_ , don't ask her how. She was in trouble, she knew it. And that was it, that last sliver of control, falling far past her grasp. She was already undone, teetering so close to the edge. And he still wasn't listening to her, still kept that same pace. Only now, he was talking to her in Spanish and she heard enough of the words she did know to surmise just enough of what he was saying to drive her closer towards that edge. When his thumb found her clit, when he finally listened and fucked her the way she wanted him to, she was lost in an explosion of heat and light and felt him tremble as she pulled him over the precipice with her.

Her climax drained everything from her, and she felt it in every inch of her body. When the edge returned to her vision, when she regained sense enough to remember where she was, he was holding her, panting deeply, trembling, and planting weak, exhausted kisses along her jawline. She lay there, dumbstruck, tracing a weak hand up his side. He twitched when she reached a spot of apparent sensitivity, laughed a little, and removed himself from her carefully.

She felt him move around her, but she did not have the energy to open her eyes. Wherever it was, this place she had found, it was warm and pleasant and-

Heat returned to her side, arms wrapped around her, and a soft blanket was laid gently over her bare, aching skin. She opened her eyes now, she had to. The light was off, but there was enough twilight to illuminate the edges of his skin and he was so beautiful.

He kissed her again, just a peck on the forehead, and she hummed weakly.

"Hey, beautiful lady…you ok?" he asked. There was concern in his voice, and the arm that held her to him pulled her just a little bit closer.

"I think…you broke me," she said.

"I only asked to kiss you," he chuckled. "The rest was all you."

"I'm glad you did…"

"Broke you?"

"Yes."

Another light silence fell over them, their breathing the only sound. Even the birdsong had abated and that didn't bother her as much as it used to. Hormones had now eased and new aches joined the old familiar. She braced herself for the return of that awful vulnerability, where without the hormones and the lust she was just naked and exposed and maybe she'd got a bit too carried away. But it never came.

"I'd follow you to the ends of the Earth, you know that?" Carlos sighed.

"I'd never ask you to."

"I know. But I would. I will."

When her eyes closed, when she gave in to the warmth and the exhaustion, she fell headlong into a dreamless sleep.


	5. Peace & Pittsburgh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pittsburgh had been a mistake.
> 
> That's what all this boiled down to. Carlos, in a motel parking lot in his sweatpants at 3am, the flickering sign chasing unease deep into his nerves.
> 
> It was a noble idea by design, one born from the hopeless romantic in him, but you know what they say about the path to hell.
> 
> ~~
> 
> Beginnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge, massive thank you to everyone who made it this far! Honestly, you have all been so wonderful and this story wouldn't have been what it is without you. I have loved reading each and every one of your comments, and just know that every one of them made me smile so thank you from the bottom of my heart. This is the end and it's been a wonderful journey and I hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.
> 
> I do have a couple ideas for future fics - I have returned to work full time now so I have a lot less time on my hands but I would like to write more for this ship :).
> 
> Thank you again for all of your support! There is a deleted scene from this chapter - the Pittsburgh one - and it explains the French (I follow the canon that Jill has french heritage), so I may post that to Tumblr if I can polish it up well enough :).

**October 6th, 1998. 07:15.**

He woke before she did, though he couldn't be sure just how much sooner. All Carlos knew was that when his eyes opened and he saw Jill still curled into his side the way she had been when sleep had claimed them, he couldn't take his eyes off her. If he did, she would surely disappear. He wasn't this lucky – guys like him, they didn't get girls like her.

But she didn't fade into wisps of air, and when she began to stir her arm only wound more tightly around him.

"Buenos días," he said.

There was a low grumble from her direction.

"I swear to God, if you start talking to me in Spanish again…"

He was tempted, so tempted.

"You sleep ok?"

"Wonderfully."

She moved then, shifting so that her head was on the pillow rather than his shoulder, and allowed her fingers to wander up his torso, leaving trails of sparks in their wake. She was close enough now to kiss and it took everything within him to not do just that. There was a certain labour to the way she moved, and she had winced as she adjusted her shoulders – he felt the aches throughout his own body and though he knew just how powerful a drug her kiss was he didn't want to assume his was the same and risk hurting her. Or scaring her off. That was another thing.

She was really here, though? The opportunity to run, to blush, to cover herself and maker her excuses had passed. Delicate fingertips traced the outline of his muscles, slid through his chest hair and as he closed his eyes and felt her move again they drifted around to his rib cage. When her lips pressed to his skin and her hand moved lower, dangerously close to his hip bone, he whispered her name like it was a prayer. Yes, definitely here. And she definitely wanted to be.

Her hand slowed and kisses ceased when she moved back towards his chest and her thumb brushed a small patch of smooth skin on the left side of his torso, just below the last rib.

"You were shot," she said. It was a statement but he heard the question it implied.

Carlos looked down, like he had forgotten he even had those scars. The one she indicated, small and vaguely rounded, was part of set. That particular one was lucky; a clean shot, no exit wound, tore him up but at least missed his kidney. The other, further toward his chest on the right side, had been even luckier; his shitty armour hadn't held up entirely but it had reduced the impact of the bullet enough that it wasn't able to deal much more than a relatively clean break to his rib rather than tear through his lung. That one probably should have killed him. Maybe it had? Maybe he was decomposing in some ditch and Umbrella, Raccoon, all of it, had been some sort of twisted purgatory and now here he was in heaven.

"Yeah," was all he could manage in reply.

"Colombia?"

His past was the last thing he wanted to go through with her right now, but there was enough curiosity in her voice to persuade him to indulge her, even if just a little.

"Yeah. Funny thing is, I'm not even sure if it was the army or the paramilitaries," he said with a bitter laugh.

"You don't have to go through it if you don't-"

"No, I want to." And he did. If she wanted to know, he wanted to share. It's what they did now. "Someone betrayed us. Or the enemy, I'm still not sure, but it was a bloodbath. A paramilitary group, the army, us. A set-up. Most of my men were killed, I tried to stay behind to get as many to safety as I could. Got shot for it. Was wearing armour too. Farmer said if I wasn't I'd probably be dead."

"Farmer?"

He laughed again, this time a little lighter. Because it really was ridiculous now that he thought back on it.

"All I remember is being dragged through some trees and then I'm in a bed hooked up to an IV and everything hurts. One of my guys had carried me out of there, to this farmer who was basically our primary care provider at that point. Guy used to be a doctor, retired for a quiet life then made a deal with…well, you know."

She kissed the scar on his right side and he felt some of the anxiety the old memories had unearthed dissipate.

"He said I had a 50:50 chance of pulling through – 70:30 if I checked into a hospital, but that was a sure-fire way to end up in jail and I wasn't convinced it was the better option. Stayed at his a few days and when I was strong enough to walk he drove me to Bogota and left me at my apartment with a handful of cow antibiotics and a 'good luck'. Umbrella found me a few days later, paid for private medical care and rehab. Thought it was awfully kind of them, now I realise I was just more use to them in peak condition."

Jill's fingers moved back up to his chest and rested there as she pressed her warm body to his side. He was very aware of the particularly soft flesh pressed against his rib-cage and he realised yet again just what a lucky asshole he was. He should have been dead several times over, in Colombia or Raccoon. Instead, he was here with her.

"You're really not what I expected," Jill hummed.

"Says Supercop."

"Says the man who saved Supercop."

"This isn't a competition, Jill," he laughed. "Besides…I'm different now."

She shifted again and when he looked down at her she was leaning on his chest, her hands beneath her chin, and she looked at him like…well, like she adored him.

"This is real, huh?" he asked, dumbly. He brought a hand to her hair and she leaned into it, closed her eyes for a long second.

"I don't know," she said. "Carlos, there's so much ahead…"

"So much behind us too. The fact we're still here, able to have moments like this after all we've been through… If this isn't what we're fighting for, then what the hell are we doing?"

Jill laughed, laid her head down and rested her cheek against her hand.

"I like you." The way she said this was so matter of fact. "A lot."

He felt his heart flutter where it beat beneath her gentle weight. God, he felt so silly. He'd barely known her a week but she had him wanting to believe a more normal life awaited them.

"I like you too," he said. "Also a lot. And if this is all we can be, I get that and I'll respect it. But if you wanted more, if you have room in that chaotic life of yours for more…well, all you gotta do is invite me in. You've got me hooked, lady, I'm not going anywhere."

When she moved this time it was with a more determined grace. A long leg moved over both of his and the next thing he knew, she was straddling him, looking down at him with the fierce determination that was the reason he was in this predicament in the first place.

He was also aware that she was naked. Very naked. And so was he. More than that, she held herself with such shameless confidence that he felt his affection for her burn through his veins with renewed fervour.

"Let's take it easy," she said. "No labels, just… Let's just be us."

He was so enamoured with her in that moment he would have agreed to anything she asked of him.

"So long as I get to wake up to your pretty face, I'm happy."

Her hair fell over his face when she leaned forward to kiss him, and the hand that had been idling on her hip traced her skin up over the curve of her breast to comb that hair back. Pressure was building below his abdomen and he knew she could feel it too, for she moaned just enough into the kiss to light a fire within him.

"Was there another condom in that pack?" she asked breathlessly.

Her bluntness. This woman…

"Just one…"

"We can get more."

As she pushed herself upright she made sure to grind her hips down and he let out a protracted groan.

"Todo sobre ti me enciende," he whispered, half under his breath, half hoping she heard him.

Oh, she did. She stopped, looked down at him with a devilish look in her eyes and cocked her head to the side the way she did when caught somewhere between annoyance and amusement.

"You're really going there?"

He knew a dare when he heard one.

"What are you going to do about it?" he said with a grin.

Her eyes flitted to the open cardboard pack on the bedside, then back to him, then she half-smiled in a way that sent a jolt of delightful apprehension through him.

"D'accord," she said, leaning in, pinning his willing arms above his head. His heart stopped. She didn't- "Maintenant, c'est mon tour."

Oh…she did…

* * *

**October 10th 1998. 03:00.**

Pittsburgh had been a mistake.

That's what all this boiled down to. Carlos, in a motel parking lot in his sweatpants at 3am, the flickering sign chasing unease deep into his nerves.

It was a noble idea by design, one born from the hopeless romantic in him, but you know what they say about the path to hell. Jill had shared his bed for four nights at that point and he felt wholly uncomfortable with the fact that she had spent so long knowing what he looked like naked but not how well he could treat her. Now, he wasn't complaining about the sex, but she was a hell of a woman and she meant a hell of a lot more to him than that. She deserved to be wined and dined. So that's what he wanted to do – take a detour to Pittsburgh, find a nice restaurant and take her on a proper date, the way he would have if they had met under any other circumstances.

Persuading her had been the tricky part. It added a lot of time to their journey, and she had no money so it would all be on him and he'd already paid for so much. But he had taken one look deep into her eyes, had held her gently and lowered his voice to almost a purr as he told her that this may be the last chance they have in a while to do something together, and she had relented. Maybe he had told her that if she did just want to drive straight through, that was fine (after all, he wasn't her boyfriend and she wasn't his girlfriend), but if she did want him to treat her to the best damn date she'd ever go on then could she at least give him a chance to prove he wasn't all words? And maybe she had sighed and realised that yes, she did want that.

But it hadn't been the best damn date she'd ever been on. It might have been the worst. Because he had taken one look around that urban sprawl and seen nothing but Raccoon City, and his brain hadn't liked that. Shadows in the alleyways, pedestrians stumbling or swaying, sirens that cut through the city noise – they all hit differently now. Jill had noticed, of course she had, and she had found a small restaurant in a quieter area of the city and had even swapped her pasta for his steak when he realised that perhaps he shouldn't order it so bloody these days.

_"It takes time,"_ she had told him. _"It will feel normal again and there's no shame in taking it easy until then."_

But that didn't make him feel any better. He had tried to do a good thing for her and had fucked it up. She deserved better than that. So now he had guilt on top of the nightmares and of course insomnia had chosen that night to stop by for an unwelcome reunion.

So here he stood, letting the cool October breeze chill him back to sanity while the flickering neon of the motel sign threatened to send him right back into the fire.

He needed a drink. Or a smoke. He'd never smoked in his life but it was something people did when they felt like shit, right?

Alas, Jill had wrangled two promises out of him following her invitation: conditions for the road ahead. The first was that he would call his family and square things with them before they left. To anyone else, he would have said no, that they were better off believing he was dead, but that had apparently hit a particularly sensitive spot and she had gone on to give him a lecture he was admittedly only half listening to. In the end, he had agreed, and it had been painful but they knew he was alive, safe, and was taking some time out to heal from the ordeal of Raccoon City. They didn't need to know the finer details, but at least they still seemed to be on talking terms.

The second promise came a couple days before departure, when she was cleaning out the kitchen and found that he had worked his way through two and a half bottles of his favourite rum. It had been a promise they had made to each other, really, as she also discovered that she had done the same with most of their beer. This promise was best summed up as 'don't drink away your troubles'.

The first had been over quickly, but the second…he was struggling with that right now. And he realised that maybe what he had told his family wasn't as long an extension of the truth as he had thought.

Eventually, he realised that no good would come of pining in a motel parking lot so he turned back towards the door of their room and slid the key into the lock as quietly as he could.

The room was still dark, but something raised the hairs on his arms as he locked the door behind him. He turned, cursing at himself for leaving his gun beside the bed, and froze when he saw Jill, upright, looking desperately over at him and clutching her pyjama top tightly with one hand.

"Hey, hey," he called as he rushed to her side, taking her hand in his as soon as he was close enough. "Are you ok?"

Jill closed her eyes, breathed through her nose for a second, then laughed bitterly.

"Another nightmare?" he asked. She nodded.

"Fuck," she cursed. "It was so _real_ … Then I woke and you were gone and I thought…"

A different kind of guilt coursed through him and he pulled her into his arms.

"Shit, Jill, I'm sorry."

"No, you did nothing wrong. I'm just…"

"Struggling with being in unfamiliar surroundings?"

Her silence told him all he needed to know. She pulled away from him and swiped at her face with her hands. Was she crying? It was too dark to see. But she made no attempt to reach out to him again so he just sat there, next to her, ready for when she needed him.

Suddenly, she froze, looked at him, took in his clothing and sighed as she realised just exactly why he had not been there. He couldn't hide anything from her.

"Carlos, you should have woke me."

"Not a chance."

She glared at him now. If only he didn't find that so endearing.

"You're not waking me from peaceful dreams," she said. "I'd much rather be keeping you company."

"Then who is going to drive tomorrow?"

"You're letting me drive now?"

"Not all the way, but that's not my point."

"You're really not making a coherent one right now…"

Carlos opened his mouth to respond, but he closed it when he realised no good would come from arguing with her. It wasn't that she looked for arguments, but it was painfully clear that she had spent too much time alone, too much time being hurt by others and not enough being cared for, so she had a tendency to push defensively when she felt vulnerable. It was why persuading her to detour to Pittsburgh had been a huge victory. It was why fucking up the way he had hurt so much.

Because it wasn't just him – she was still hurting too. And he would have taken all of her pain and made it his own if it would give her some respite. She didn't deserve to feel like that and it killed him that he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

"You're thinking about Pittsburgh again," she said. Well, she had him there. He looked up at her and her expression had softened, her shoulders relaxed and she was reaching for his hands.

"Can I say I'm sorry one more time?"

"No."

It was his turn to frown, but maybe he did it a little too dramatically. And there was his defense mechanism. Humour. Pretending not to take things seriously when really he was screaming for help.

"What the hell are we?" he said with an unconvincing laugh. "Two broken things."

With a move so graceful he barely noticed, she reached up and brushed his hair back over his ear (of course it didn't stay there), then brushed a thumb over his cheek and tucked her fingers behind his neck to bring him closer to her. As their foreheads touched, he felt her other hand slip into his and suddenly everything felt still.

"Pittsburgh was perfect," she said. "I…Having someone that even just _wants_ to do something like that for me…that's something I'm not used to. And I know it didn't go the way you planned, but it was more than I could have ever asked for. So please, don't feel bad about doing a good thing."

There were words he wished he had the courage to say to her, sentiments he knew would do him no good to express. So, he kissed her, quickly and softly, but of course that was never enough for either of them and next thing he knew her tongue was teasing his and he was again marveling at how damn good she tasted. When they parted, breathless, he kissed her nose, and then her cheek, and she laughed and playfully pushed him away.

"Come back to bed," she urged. "If you can't sleep then just hold me."

He really didn't need to be told twice. So, he shed his hoodie and sweatpants and climbed eagerly beneath the bed sheets. She was there, waiting for him, wrapping her arms around him and tucking herself into his chest before he had fully settled.

This would never get old, he decided. Jill was very 'all or nothing' when it came to displays of affection, but no matter what her mood it didn't take much coaxing for her to fold into his arms at night. And whenever she did, she would let out a little sigh like she did right then, and all of her armour would just melt away. Here, he knew he had the real Jill Valentine, the one he had utterly fallen for. No masks, no pretenses, no excuses. Already, he knew how rare it was to catch her with her guard down and the fact that she trusted him enough to see her that way was nothing short of an honour.

"Promise to wake me if you need me?" she asked. Her voice was already heavy, sleep already come to claim her.

"Sleep, beautiful lady," he told her. "I'll be okay."

There was no energy left in her to protest now, and he felt the swell of her chest steady as she slipped back into what he hoped was a far more peaceful sleep than the one that awaited him.

* * *

**October 10th, 1998. 15:00.**

It was warm within the car but Jill kept the windows closed. Carlos had been asleep in the passenger seat for almost two hours now and she cast him the same kind of glance a mother would a sleeping baby, easing off the gas when it looked like he might wake and even killing the radio.

It had been more of a fight than she would have liked to get him to switch at the last pit stop but she was worried he would fall asleep at the wheel if they hadn't. Apparently, he was as stubborn as she was when he put his mind to it. It was a battle she had won, however, and now that he was sleeping she didn't care if she was adding time to the journey to ensure he remained that way.

Alas, as the rural roads gave way to more defined stretches and the traffic increased she was forced to reach over and squeeze his thigh.

"Wake up, sleepy head," she urged.

Carlos woke with a snort.

"Wha-"

"We're almost there," she said, smiling at him from behind the aviators she had claimed as her own.

"Fuck. How long was I out?"

"Couple hours. You obviously needed it."

He shielded his eyes from the sun as he adjusted to his surroundings and she had to force herself to keep her eyes on the road and not on him.

"Sorry," he said. "You could have kept the radio on, you know."

"Wouldn't have been able to hear it over your snoring."

"Did you wake me up just to insult me?"

"You don't need to be awake for that," she pointed out. "But I'm about to introduce you to my friends; I don't want you half-asleep and drooling."

She could feel his eyes on her and it was all she could do to not burst into peals of laughter. This was still new to her. Not so much laughing in general but laughing and really meaning it.

With every day that passed she felt more and more confident that inviting him along had been the right decision. The morning after that night, when she had woken in his arms, she worried that perhaps she had opened herself up too far, let him in more than she had intended and now she had to deal with something she really hadn't bargained for. But when he had woken too and had expected nothing of her she knew that she had been so wrong to have ever held any doubts. They had too much ahead to call it a loving happy relationship and be done, but neither was content just being friends, even ones who fucked. So, they had found a happy medium. Neither really knew what that meant, but she knew that she felt at peace when she was with him, and a few weeks ago she hadn't thought that was something she would ever feel again.

"Barry and Rebecca, right?" he asked, snapping her from her thoughts.

"Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers. Barry was S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team, Rebecca Bravo – he loves guns and she's smart as hell."

"And Chris is in Europe?"

"Paris. Chris Redfield. Also Alpha team, my partner, my best friend, smokes like a chimney, total asshole."

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Carlos grimace. She had already briefed him on her friends and while he seemed confident with the two they were heading to, Chris was still an uncertainty. She knew for a fact that Chris wouldn't trust him, not at first. It wouldn't be personal - his ties to Umbrella were too much of a red flag and Chris didn't trust anyone anymore, not after Wesker. But he would learn, in the end. Chris trusted her and while he didn't always accept her judgement he came around eventually. Above all, she hoped that when he realised how much Carlos had helped her he would at least be grateful and that would be their common ground to start from. Maybe he would see how happy Carlos made her and that would in turn make him happy enough to forget the rest.

"They know I'm coming?"

Jill nodded.

"They…even know about…'us'."

She saw him turn in her periphery but kept her eyes fixed on the road as the scenery turned residential and the empty land on either side of them began to sprout houses.

"You told your friends we're a thing?" He seemed half amused, half flustered. "Have we even told each other we're a thing? _Are_ we even a thing?"

"We're…a thing," she said, mildly annoyed. "Of course we're a fucking thing. And I didn't tell them, Rebecca kind of…figured it out. Told you she was smart."

It was the first time she had vocalised their relationship as such, perhaps the first time she had truly admitted it to herself. And what kind of admission was it really? They were in a relationship but they also weren't in a relationship? They were a thing, but not _that_ kind of thing? They weren't friends with benefits, more lovers with less strings? She couldn't find words to put to it so she guessed 'a thing' would have to do.

She chanced a look away from the road long enough to catch his smirk, like he'd won some sort of victory. And maybe he had.

When her eyes flitted back she saw a white villa up ahead, a black truck parked in the driveway.

"Here we are!"

She brought the car to a slow rolling stop at the curb. It was just as pretty as Rebecca had promised; considerably less lived-in than the farmhouse they had left but with a similar albeit more modern rustic charm. The engine had barely died when she saw a twitch in the curtains of what she assumed to be the front room.

Excitement swelled within her. It had been a month since she had last seen her friends but so much had happened since then it may as well have been a year. She had missed them so much.

A hand on her thigh brought her attention back to the car and Carlos was smiling at her when she turned to him.

"You go on ahead," he said. "Go see your friends, I'll get the bags."

Jill didn't move, not even as she heard the front door open. This wasn't how she had pictured this moment. She should have been the one opening the door, running to greet them, helping them with their bags and explaining excitedly that their favourite drinks were already in the fridge and the oven was on but they could always order takeout tonight, if they wanted. But she wasn't. And that was okay. But she wouldn't have been here at all if it weren't for Carlos. The man she had almost left behind.

Not caring who could see, she pulled his head towards her and kissed him furiously, intensely, feeling her affection for him in places that weren't even physical. That sensible part of her brain warned her that she had already fallen for him by the time she was aware of any attraction at all, that one day she would wake up and realise she was in love with him and it would be too late. Another part of her thought maybe she already was so fuck it, in for a penny…

"We're a team," she told him when they parted. "We're in this together. The bags can wait."

His smile showed his gratitude, and she wanted to repeat herself just so she could see it again. God, he was so handsome when he smiled. That was how she knew she was in trouble – it wasn't about the sex, and never truly had been. She wanted to make him happy, wanted to chase away his troubles, sing him to sleep when he struggled. And she wanted to show him her scars and let him help her heal, wanted to just lay there with him, feel his warmth and hear him whisper softly to her. She wanted to show him how vulnerable she felt so she didn't have to bear that weight alone.

With one last slow peck of a kiss, she turned to the familiar figures emerging from the house and stepped out onto the sidewalk, comfortable in the knowledge that he was right behind her, and that he always would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~Translations~
> 
> Spanish: "Everything about you turns me on."  
> French: "Ok. Now, it's my turn."


End file.
